THE NEW 
HORTICULTURE 



H. M, STRINGFELLOW 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOStr 



THE NEW HORTICULTURE 




H. M. STRINGFELLOW 



THE NEW 
HORTICULTURE 



BY 

H. M. STRINGFELLOW 






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PUBLISHED BY 

FARM AND RANCH PUBLISHING COMPANY 
DALLAS, TEXAS 

1906 






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lUBAARY of CdNt^RE6s][ 
Iwu Conies rtMMKdc 4 

OCT 14, )^Ud ^ 



Copyright, 1S96 
By H. M. STRINGFELLOW 

Copyright, 1906 
By FARM AND RANCH PUBLISHING COMPANY 



J(9ount ©leaisant ©reuis 

J. Horace McFarland Company 
Harrisburg • Pennsylvania 



DEDICATION 

WITH feelings of the deepest appreciation for their in- 
valuable services in behalf of the New Horticulture, I 
now dedicate this new and revised edition. First, to 
Farm and Ranch, the only journal in the whole country 
that nearly twenty years ago opened its columns to what all 
others considered the visionary "pipe dreams" of a crack- 
brained enthusiast and declined to publish, thereby affording 
me opportunity to present these great natural horticultural 
truths, and save them from perishing from off the face of the 
earth. 

Second, to Thomas L. Brunk, then professor of horticul- 
ture at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, the 
very first man to whom I confided them, who at once recog- 
nized their inestimable value, and the next year verified a 
part of them at the Maryland Experiment Station, to which 
he had been called, and from which he was discharged for 
wasting his time and issuing a bulletin on such wild vagaries. 
Disgusted at such blind prejudice, he embarked in another 
line of business successfully. 

Third, to E. W. Kirkpatrick, the nurseryman and public- 
spirited citizen, whom all Texans love to honor, who was 
not only equally prompt to see these great truths but at once 
put them into practice, recommending them also in his cata- 
logue to his customers, and boldly advocating them in public. 
To those three, the fruit-growers of the world owe a lasting 
debt of gratitude ; but for them, they would still be in the 
bondage of that trio of horticultural tyrants, the plow, the 
cultivator and the pruning knife, who with their prime minis- 
ter, the little bacterial devil, "brown rot," have from time 
out of mind levied a tribute upon their earnings that far sur- 
passes in amount the fortune of a Rockefeller. 

H. M. STRINGFELLOW. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The New Dispensation ..... i 

II. Old Primitive Orchards .... 4 

III. How I Discovered Close Root-pruning . . 9 

IV. Close Root-pruning ..... 14 

V. Right and Wrong Close Root-pruning . . 24 

VI. Best Time and Depth to Plant ... 27 

VII. Deep Preparation Wrong . . . -30 

VIII. Cultivation ....... 35 

IX. Growing Trees from Bearing Ones . . 44 

X. Winter Budding ...... 49 

XI. Grafting ........ 52 

XII. Why Trees in Bottoms Never Drown . 54 

XIII. Grapes 58 

XIV. The Apple 63 

XV. The Pear 67 

XVI. The Plum 70 

XVII. The Peach 75 

XVIII. Apricots, Figs, Japan Persimmons and Nuts 77 

XIX. The Strawberry and Other Berries . . 80 

XX. A Review 87 

(vii) 



via CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI. Effects of Cultivation ..... 93 

XXII. Blight, and Other Tree Diseases . . . 103 

XXIII. Pruning, Insects, Fertilizing and Influence of 

Scion on the Stock . . . 113 

XXIV. Tree Breeding and Origination of New Fruits. 120 
XXV. Gathering, Marketing and Storing Fruit . 126 

XXVI. The Pecan 134 

XXVII. Conclusion ....... 141 



CHAPTER I. 

The New Dispensation. 

IN presenting the second part of this volume to the atten- 
tion of the fruit-growing public, I do it with a feeling cf 
confidence that the time is ripe for a new dispensation of 
horticultural truths, and while they may, with their novelty, 
startle from their sleepy routine many of the high priests who 
minister around the altars throughout the country, the kindly 
reception awarded them in this section is an earnest of their 
general adoption everywhere in the near future. The public 
now demand the best of fruit, and they want it cheap. The 
day of high prices has probably gone forever, and it is a 
doubtful question whether fruit-growing, with the short-lived, 
unproductive, diseased and insect-ridden trees of to-day, and 
their uncertain crops, now pays. To practice the most ad- 
vanced methods (taught by Mr. J. H. Hale, for instance, on 
peaches, and by others on apples, pears, etc.) requires an 
expenditure that is often not even covered by the receipts. 
The amount of extra nurturing, coddling and special petting, 
sometimes called "intensive handling," in the way of cultiva- 
tion, pruning, thinning, fertilizing and spraying, to make pay 
an orchard grown from three- or four-year-old, long, fibrous- 
rooted trees, is appalling ; and when we contrast it with the cer- 
tain, cheap and easy-going style in which the twenty-year-old 
Rambo apple tree, mentioned in the last chapter of this vol- 
ume, brings in the dollars, we may well cry, "Hasten the good 
time when all fruits can be thus grown!" That is the mis- 
sion of this gospel of the "New Horticulture" I now advo- 
cate, which, though nominally new, is really as old as the 
morn in spring in the long, long ago, ages before Eve plucked 
and Adam ate the apple, when the warm sunbeams kissed the 
dew from the first modestly opening fruit blooms, whenever 
that was. Its principles, from which we have now wandered 



2 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

SO far, to our great loss, are identical with those practiced 
from the beginning by wise Mother Nature. With lavish 
hand she scattered the seed that fell upon the solid earth, 
and produced trees after their kind, from which, down through 
the puzzling maze of ages of evolution and the survival of 
the fittest, where her original forests stand, she now presents 
to our admiring gaze majestic evidences of her skill. To illus- 
trate those principles is the main object of this book. Plain 
as they are, I stumbled over them for years, like the rest 
of the horticultural world, blind to the patent fact that in all 
their peculiarities of growth and treatment, both fruit and 
forest trees are the same. They are both the result of specific 
conditions and surroundings. No fostering hand of man, 
with friendly cultivator, spade or plow, was present during 
the millions of years of their evolution, to kindly aid in their 
struggles with climatic adversities the sturdy monarchs of 
the forest, which from the frigid to the torrid zone, in slowly 
changing cycles of climate, have crowned the rocky hills and 
mountains and covered the broad valleys with their sheltering 
boughs. So they have, through succeeding generations, 
adapted themselves perfectly to their environments by the 
survival of the fittest, and from age to age found in the firm, 
unbroken virgin soil, with no disturbance of their surface 
roots, the conditions best suited to their perfect development. 
The same law applies to fruit trees as well. 

Perhaps, if our horticultural scientists had their way, and 
through successive generations of like-minded descendants, 
could but grow fruit trees for a million or so years more, con- 
tinuously from long-rooted ones, on ground subsoiled and 
deeply pulverized, they might ultimately, like nature, evolve 
a race of trees that would prefer and thrive best on such a 
soil, and fruit perhaps as well as Mr. Pierce's Rambo apple 
tree, alluded to hereafter, or live as long as the old Seckel or 
Sudduth pear. But the trees we now have to deal with 
retain too much of the perversity of their wild parents not to 
kick at such treatment. The experiments recounted later on, 
of Mr. Patterson and the squirrels, and the stunted pear trees 
in my Hitchcock orchard, on a muck bed, with two feet of 



THE NEW DISPENSATION. 3 

rich surface soil beneath them, prove this beyond all doubt. 
Seeing, then, that they foolishly reject our efforts in their be- 
half, why not, as it costs so much less, and the trees produce 
so much more and finer fruit, indulge them in their long-time 
preferences. However, before entering my plea for this 
course, I will in a short digression make some remarks : ist, 
on the old primitive orchards of our forefathers ; and, also, 
2d, give a short account of how I happened to hit upon the 
great fundamental principle of all entirely succcessful horti- 
culture, that the nearer we can bring a transplanted tree to 
the form of a seed, the better it will be for the tree, as will 
be seen by the following recent extract from Farm and Ravcli: 

While viewing the path of the recent tornado that swept 
through the city of Sherman, Texas, destroying scores of precious 
lives and happy homes, I noticed the effect of the force on tlie trees. 
Some trees were uprooted, some snapped off above ground, some 
stripped of limbs and bark and others were twisted into splinters. 
One large post oak, about two feet in diameter, was splintered and 
twisted like a huge rope. A large apple orchard was uprooted, and 
I searched in vain for a tap-root on any of those apple trees. They 
had the appearance of being planted with long roots and tramped 
into a small hole, with the point of the roots near the surface where 
they remained and continued to grow. The soil was rich, sandy loam 
on deep, rich, moist clay. The forest trees were large and strong, and 
most of them refused to be uprooted and were snapped off. Had 
these trees been planted so as to induce the growth of strong tap- 
roots, evidently they would have been larger, stronger, healthier and 
more fruitful. — E. W. Kirkpatrick. 



CHAPTER II. 

Old Primitive Orchards. 

THERE is no more interesting subject for investigation, 
nor one that has puzzled observers more completely, 
than why we are unable now to grow as healthy, long- 
lived and productive fruit trees as our forefathers. Many 
and various have been the theories advanced, but the most 
general one seems to be that in the early settlement of the 
country the vast forest area had a mysterious and potent in- 
fluence on climate and tree diseases, and that the gradual 
clearing of the land has, somehow or other, changed condi- 
tions so radically that fruit trees in general, and certain 
varieties in particular, no longer succeed as they formally did. 
Where once in the eastern states the apple and the pear 
attained the giant proportions of forest trees, now, as a 
rule, they crouch and cower in valley and on hill, their 
puny, stunted, blighting offspring a pitiful burlesque, in 
many instances, of their grand old sires. 

I came across a statement a few days ago, that in 1721, a 
small " settlement of forty families near Boston made three 
thousand barrels of cider, and another New England village 
of two hundred families made ten thousand barrels." Pre- 
sumably they reserved fruit enough for all domestic uses, 
fresh and dried, and this vast amount of cider was simply 
from the surplus fruit. Remembering that those were days 
of small family orchards, not of thousands of acres like we 
now plant, can we anywhere find a parallel in productiveness 
to-day ? The trees that gave those enormous yields were 
presumably either seedlings, root grafts or grown from small 
one-year maiden trees, with few roots when set, except the 
tap, and those doubtless cut off not far below the surface. 
The nurseryman, with his large, fine, three and four-year-old, 
long, fibrous-rooted trees, like those now sold, had not yet 

(4) 



OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS. 



appeared upon the stage to captivate those rustic growers 
with visions of early fruit. And while on its face there may 
seem to be some show of reason in this theory of climatic 
change as the cause for all this acknowledged inferiority and 
decay, yet when examined in the cold light of statistical 
climatology and actual experience, it crumbles, a baseless 
fabric, to the ground. The records, from the earliest times, 
show no material change in average temperature or rainfall 
between then and now, and we still have, here and there, all 
over the country, strong, vigorous and productive old seed- 
ling trees, like the Sudduth pear in Illinois, and the Arkansas 
Mammoth Black-Twig apple, which show beyond all doubt 
that in certain places, and under certain conditions, it is still 
possible to grow apple and pear trees fit companions to those 
of long ago, and which tower among the fruit trees of to-day, 
like Saul among his brethren, head and shoulders above them 
all. These hale old mementos of by-gone days are living 
witnesses against the theory of climatic change, for C. M. 
Stark, of Missouri, in American Garden of January, says: 
"The original Mammoth Black-Twig apple tree is still stand- 
ing near Rhea's Mill, in Washington county, Arkansas, and 
bearing fruit, and at the recent meeting of the State Horti- 
cultural Society of that state, at Fayettville, there was an ex- 
hibit of apples from this tree labeled, 'M. B.-Twig, from the 
original tree, sixty-five years old, two feet eight inches in 
diameter 2^/^ feet above the ground.'" And yet, just across 
the state line in Kansas, the well-known king of apple grow- 
ers, Mr. Frank Wellhouse, the owner of 1,200 acres of trees, 
plants sixteen feet apart in the rows, because in twelve or 
fifteen years he finds that his long-rooted, well sprayed and 
cultivated trees, standing on thoroughly prepared ground, 
cease to pay. 

These being some of the facts in the case, what is the true 
answer to the New York Legislature's call last year for infor- 
mation as to the acknowledged decadence of modern orchards, 
especially the apple ? It will not do to talk apologetically, in 
explanation of repeated crop failures, about the great number 
of fungous enemies, late frosts, dry seasons, chilling winds 



6 THE NEW HOUTICULTURE. 

and cold, wet weather at blooming time, as if all those con- 
ditions did not prevail in the "Auld Lang Syne" as well as 
now. Hear what Mr. S. F. Alberger, in a recent issue of the 
Orange Jiidd Farmer, has to say about the conduct now of 
some of these old-time apple trees : "The apple trees that 
pay best now in Western New York are from sixty to one 
hundred years old. I think it is because their branches sel- 
dom intersect, and their roots run deep into the soil, and dur- 
ing our customary dry fall weather, supply to the fruit buds 
not only moisture, but the kind and quality of food neces- 
sary to give them the vital power required to perfect the fer- 
tilization of the flowers and the setting of the fruit the next 
spring. I think tlie lack of vital force in the buds is one 
great fault in our commercial orchards of to-day. In many 
of these orchards, if the trees are dug up, it will frequently 
be found that they have no tap-roots at all, but the roots 
start out at almost right angles, and in some cases are 
found, at fifteen to twenty feet from the trees, to be only six 
inches or a foot below the surface. Some of these trees 
showed decay at the center of the trunk ; in three cases, 
where the trees had been grafted, it could be seen between 
the layers of yearly growth from six to twelve years after 
planting, but the trunks of a twenty-two-year-old seedling and 
several sevent3'-five-year-old seedlings that were limb-grafted 
do not indicate any decay. Does the insertion of the graft 
or scion into tiie crown cause this delay ?" 

Verily, Mr. Alberger is hitting very close to the truth, in 
his diagnosis of the commercial orchards of the present day, 
grown from large, fibrous and long-rooted trees. But to an- 
swer the interrogatory of the New York Legislature more fully 
as to this well-known decadence, let us go back to the time, 
several hundred years ago, when there were no orchards in 
America. When the Mayflower glided alongside of Pl}'- 
mouth Rock, folded to rest her white wings, that for many a 
long, weary day and night had breasted the Atlantic's gales, 
and from her deck the Pilgrims stepped in search of new 
homes, we know that they brought seeds, including fruits of 
various kinds, and when settled, from time to time imported 



OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS. 7 

more. But for many years, in fact generations, compelled, 
as they were, to battle with the elements and Indians, and 
clear forests, little attention could have been paid to fruit- 
growing, except in a small way for individual use, and every 
one doubtless propagated for himself, by the old and well- 
known method of root-grafting, or from seed, where the trees 
were to stand. It is a fair presumption, indeed, that anything 
like a commercial nursery was then unknown, friends and 
neighbors performing such kindly offices as budding and graft- 
ing for each other without pay. This continued, doubtless, 
for many generations. In fact, up to the beginning of the 
present century there were practically no nurseries at all, and 
the institutions of this description that are so common now 
all over the country really date back scarcely more than fifty 
or seventy-five years. But as more and more attention was 
given to fruit culture, naturally people here and there would 
grow trees for sale, and many seasons would doubtless have 
an over-supply. Not wishing to lose them, these would be 
transplanted once or more, to check growth and keep them 
from getting too large, and intending purchasers, seeing such 
big, fine stock, in their desire and haste for immediate bear- 
ing, and encouraged by the honest but mistaken nurseryman, 
would naturally purchase these large trees, in preference to 
the small ones; and, indeed, if treated right, a two or three- 
year-old tree, or even one five or six years old is equally as 
good, and will fruit sooner than a younger one. But the 
trouble was, then as now, that right treatment was not under- 
stood, and in order to preserve a large part of the handsome 
tops, which the customers of course desired, the nurseryman 
naturally advised retaining as much as possible of the long 
and fibrous roots, the result of transplanting once or more. 
And thus it gradually came about, that there grew up an aris- 
tocracy of root, and when dug and graded in the fall, the 
value and price of the stock was largely determined, just 
as it is now, by the size and quantity of the roots. I 
doubt, indeed, whether there is to-day (April 2, igo6) a 
nurseryman in the whole country who has not numbers of 
fine trees of all varieties that by accident have been dug 



8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

with short roots, for which he will cheerfully take half price. 
But to return to our immediate forefathers and their doings 
in the fields of horticulture. Naturally, in very dry seasons 
or in case of neglected trees, set with large tops, the tangled 
mass of feeble, fibrous roots would fail to take hold in the 
soil, and, exhausted by evaporation from the tops, would die. 
Then at once went up the cry, "More root !" Why not ? 
Taught to believe that roots were absolutely necessary, nat- 
urally the planter would conclude, the more the better, just as 
is taught in all the books to-day ; and indeed, so firmly is it 
fixed in the minds of many of our most eminent fruit grow- 
ers that, though earnestly requested to do so, they will not 
even plant a single close root-pruned tree as an experiment. 
This has for several years been my general experience, in try- 
ing to inaugurate this all-important reform. And yet it is 
absolutely the foundation of all permanent success in the 
orchards of the future. We have now got to a point where a 
small one-year tree is considered worthless, and it is well- 
nigh impossible to sell a tree that has not been transplanted 
once, and oftener twice, to give it plenty of roots, and when 
such trees are planted, with all their matted fibrous roots, the 
doom of that orchard is sealed, whether it be with blight and 
scab in the pear and apple, yellows in the peach, or black- 
knot and root-tumor in the plum and peach. Such orchards 
are bound to fail early, become diseased, and die. And so, in 
tracing the probable course and progress of horticulture in 
this country from the earliest times down until now, we find 
that of necessity, commencing with seedlings and root-grafts 
(practically my method), its whole history has been a descent 
from health, longevity and productiveness in the beginning, 
as history and tradition both prove, down to disease, early 
decay and unfruitfulness at the present time, and in an exact 
and direct ratio to the increased quantity of roots left on, 
and age of the trees when set. The older the tree and the 
more root, the worse for the tree ever afterwards. Just how 
I happened to discover this important truth will be told in 
the next chapter. 



CHAPTER III. 

How I Discovered Close Root-Pruning. 

AS this principle of horticulture is absolutely the most 
important, without a single exception, in the whole 
science, and the foundation of all permanent success, 
it is most astonishing that men have stumbled over it almost 
daily from the beginning, and never realized its value. The 
ordinary root-graft has been the most common form of prop- 
agation for most fruit trees for time out of mind, and every 
nurseryman knows what superior trees can be thus grown in 
a single season. And yet it has never occurred to any one to 
say : If a small piece of root will make such a fine tree, why 
will not the same principle apply the second or any other 
year afterward ? Just how the value of this method did first 
present itself to me is as follows : Nobody here having any 
faith in the success of my venture of pear planting, I found 
it impossible at first to sell but few of the trees I had grown 
from cuttings, but having hopes that the astonishing vigor 
and thrift of my orchard would start a demand, I dug the 
young trees for several years, and transplanted to keep them 
from getting too large, as they surely would, judging from the 
way the orchard was doing. So we opened wide furrows and, 
spreading out the pear tree roots evenly, according to the 
universal directions, covered them nicely and firmed the 
ground well. Being an old market-gardener, though a new 
nurseryman, and a believer in manure, as already shown, I 
gave the rows of young trees a good dressing of cotton-seed 
meal, and with fair cultivation, at the end of the year I had 
no cause for complaint, as they all did well. But even that 
early I had caught on to the fact that, for some unexplained 
reason, the cuttings planted at the same time as the rooted 
trees always averaged much better. Moreover, another great 
point in their favor was, that when we came to pack the few 

(9) 



lO THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

trees i did sell, being green at the business I found a world of 
trouble to make the clumsy, flat-rooted ones from the young 
trees agree with one another and lie comfortably in the same 
bundle. Having been planted with quite long ones, they were 
entirely lateral-rooted when dug. But the trees grown from 
cuttings, while they gave us a world of trouble to get out 
with the regulation amount and length of root, when we 
came to pack, were regular daisies — roots all long, deep and 
straight, and as easy to pack as sardines in a box. The 
third year I had extraordinary luck, and grew about seven 
thousand trees from cuttings. Having again sold only about 
two thousand, I found quite a job on my hands late in spring, 
as we had waited, hoping some purchaser would come along. 
But he did not, so we had to tackle the transplanting job 
again, and at the same time look forward to next year's pack- 
ing of those roots, if sales turned out good. I remember well 
standing before the row where the trees were all nicely heeled 
in, with the buds ready to leaf out, and my only help, Frank, 
a colored boy, at my side, who had just as little fancy as I for 
the job. After holding a council of war for awhile as to the 
best and easiest way to get all those roots under ground, and 
Frank had actually gone down once with the plow and was 
coming back on the furrow, throwing the dirt out, the idea 
occurred all at once in the form of a self question. Some- 
thing seemed to say : "If those trees grew so well with no 
root at all, what's the matter with cutting them all off, and 
letting them try it over again?" No sooner thought than 
settled. Frank was within fifty feet of me coming back, and 
when he got there I astonished him by saying: "Now go 
back and throw the furrow together again," and told him of 
my idea. Without a moment's hesitation that colored boy, 
Frank Bell, caught on to the whole thing, saying, "Good," 
and started back on the row. And yet I have been writing 
and urging fruitgrowers for the last eight years just to 
try the method, even on a single tree; but so thoroughly 
had the long-root idea incorporated itself into the mental 
machinery of most of them, that until the last year or two it 
has been in vain. I laid the whole subject in a most exhaust- 



HOW 1 DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOI-PKUN 1 NO. 



ive article before the American Pomological Society five 3'ears 
ago, at Washington, which, if it was ever read, certainly pro- 
duced no other result except perhaps to stamp me as a wild 
and woolly Texas crank! 

But to return to my story. We pitched in, and in short 
order had the whole 
five thousand trees 
reduced back to cut- 
tings again, at least 
in appearance, for 
we did not stop at 
any half-way close- 
pruning, like thou- 
sands will who try it 
with fear and doubt. 
We both agreed that 
it was a plain case 
of no need for root 
at all, and off they 
came, as close to the 
ends as we could cut 
them, for our inten- 
tion was simply to 
stick them back in 
the rows as cuttings, 
after reducing the 
tops to one foot. 
And we treated the 
whole five thousand 
just that way. If 
a single tree died, I 
never saw it, and by 
fall those rows pre- 
sented a picture of 
vigorous and even 
growth, many trees 
being eight to ten feet high, like the tree I hold in my hand in 
the illustration, though the root-pruned tree in the other hand 




TRKE IN RIGHT HAND GROWN IN ONE YEAR FROM 
ONE LIKE THAT IN LEFT HAND. 



la THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

has twice as much root as those had. But what shall I say 
of the great, deep, penetrating roots they had struck ! The 
tree I hold shows exactly the character of their root system, 
though it has several large roots broken off in digging from 
the hard-pan pipe-clay subsoil, and the photograph by no 
means does justice to the size of the ends of the roots next 
to the floor, which were from the size of a knitting needle to 
a wheat-straw, showing plainly they had gone far deeper. In 
fact, I am confident that could all of that tree's roots have 
been taken up, the extreme length would have been as great 
as the top, which had to be bent and broken down for photo- 
graphing, and measured eleven feet. I wish particularly to 
emphasize the fact that this tree was grown on stiff, black, 
waxy soil, broken about four inches deep, having a hard-pan 
yellow pipe-clay subsoil, that positively defies a spade. And 
yet we find pages in the books about the absolute necessity 
for a deeply plowed and subsoiled bed for trees, to enable 
their roots to take hold, forgetting that hard and soft are 
relative terms, and ground as hard as a rock to us is as soft 
as butter to a close root-pruned tree. 

But a little more about that lot of trees. By this time 
people began to talk and investigate, and wild rumors of fab- 
ulous Le Conte pear crops and profits over in Georgia found 
their way over here. That fall I sold nearly every tree I 
had, and, having found out this easy method of planting, I 
hastened to spread the glad tidings, as well as to "butcher" 
the tree roots in digging. Frank had a weather eye for an 
easy job, and when I said, "Dig with short roots," he was 
quick to obey, and we hustled them out in a hurry. But 
when I came to deliver, I found that I had made a big mis- 
take, for talk as eloquently as I would about the virtue of 
short roots, and with the trees in my hands to demonstrate 
its truth, I actually had several parties refuse to buy, and had 
to guarantee nearly all I did sell to grow. This wound up 
my efforts as a close root-pruned tree propagandist for some 
time, and while knowing they were worse than useless, to my 
great disgust, I was compelled to dig with all the roots pos- 
sible. In fact, so disheartening were my efforts for a number 



HOW I DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 1 3 

of years that if Prof. T. L. Brunk, then of our Texas A. and 
M. College, had not, on a visit of several days to my home, 
urged me so earnestly once more to bring the subject before 
the public in the Southern Horticultural Journal, of which he 
was the editor, and also in Farm and Ranch, it might have 
rested until now. He saw the philosophy of the whole thing 
at a glance when I pointed it out, and showed him the trees, 
and afterwards, when connected with the Experiment Station 
at Washington, he made the very exhaustive experiments, an 
account of which is elsewhere in this volume. Had not per- 
sonal and political motives succeeded in ousting him from 
"Washington shortly afterwards, this most enthusiastic and 
progressive master of horticulture would, I feel sure, long 
ago have succeeded in demonstrating, in the public position 
he held near the capitol, the utility and vast superiority of 
the close root-pruning over the long-rooted method. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Close Root -Pruning. 

WITH all our knowledge and progress in the other arts 
and sciences, there is abundant evidence to prove that 
in the science and practice of horticulture we have 
retrograded so far that only last year the legislature of New 
York passed a bill appropriating funds and authorizing the 
Commissioner of Agriculture to investigate and determine, if 
possible, the causes for the widespread decadence of the 
orchards in western New York, both in the matter of the de- 
creasing health and shortened life of the trees, as well as the 
inferior quality and diminished yield of fruit. This investi- 
gation is now in progress, and is awakening great interest in 
the east. It is a well-known fact that all over the countr}' the 
same conditions exist that are complained of in New York. 
While last year gave a phenomenal yield of fruit every- 
where, it is the first for several years, and not like!}'- to occur 
soon again, and it is certain that the sturdy fruit trees which 
delighted the eye with their grand proportions, and tickled 
the palates of our forefathers with their regular and abundant 
crops of fine fruit, are a thing of the past. Something cer- 
tainly is wrong when apple trees cease to be profitable at fif 
teen years of age, and peach trees reach their prime in five and 
die in ten or less, as they do nearly everywhere in our culti- 
vated orchards, and yet old seedlings in fence corners, chicken 
yards, old fields and around the back doors are standing up 
cheerily under the weight of twenty or thirty years ; and Mr. 
Hale himself drew his inspiration, when he embarked in his 
successful career of peach growing, from a sixty-year tree 
that stood in a neglected but friendly fence-row on his ances- 
tral farm. That there are causes for all this, outside of 
diminished fertility, want of care or fancied change of climate, 
is certain. 



CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 



15 



I will now enumerate the four probable causes which, from 
a series of observations and experiments for many years, I am 
sure are at the bottom of the trouble, and in so doing, will 
confine myself strictly to facts, which anyone can verify for 
himself. 

1. I claim that the best form of tree for planting is 
exactly the opposite of that recommended by all authorities 
from time immemorial, inasmuch as the latter departs far- 
thest from nature's method of seed, which experience of the 
past proves to be the best, and to which I claim my method 
is superior. The close root-pruned tree, as shown in the 
accompanying cut (page 21), struck several strong penetra- 
ting tap-roots, instead of one, like a seedling, and sent them 
much deeper, fully ten feet in a single season. 

2. I claim that deep preparation of the ground, as now 
recommended, is equally far from the truth and nature's 
method of a firm, unbroken soil, inasmuch as such deeply 
pulverized ground, after excessive rains, even though well 
drained, will for several days become a bog, to drown and 
scald the young rootlets in summer and freeze them to death 
in winter at the North. 

3. That all cultivation of trees after several years, 
when the feeding roots hunt the surface, is wrong/,?;- se, inas- 
much as all trees depend upon these surface roots for the 
proper development of the fruit, both as to size and quality, 
and any cultivation must necessarily be destructive to them. 
Of course, when first planted, the middles can be utilized for 
several years without serious injury, for growing crops be- 
tween if desired ; but from the very start, except a space 
around each tree large enough to prevent damage from the 
mowing blade, frequent and close mowing through the grow- 
ing season, leaving the clippings on the ground, is the best 
plan for all close root-pruned trees, with annual fertilizing to 
perfect the crop. But please take notice that I do not rec- 
ommend this treatment for poor, handicapped, three and 
four-year-old, long, fibrous-rooted trees, if planted as they 
come from the nursery. 

4. That all fall, winter and spring pruning, until after 



l6 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

the trees are in full growth, is contrary to nature and common 
sense, in that it, as well as fall, winter and early spring 
stirring of the ground tends to break our trees' rest and 
start a premature motion of the sap. 

These four fundamental principles of successful horticul- 
ture are in perfect accordance with nature and experience, as 
demonstrated by all forest trees, as well as old chance seed- 
lings of all fruits everywhere, and constitute the "New Hor- 
ticulture" I now advocate. To these four points, and my 
internal theory of all species of tree bacteria, and the causes 
of their development in the forms of yellows, blight, root- 
tumor, scab, black-knot, etc., I invite the earnest attention of 
fruit-growers everywhere, and a full, exhaustive, friendly crit- 
icism. I am wedded to no theory, or bound by no prejudice, 
but simply follow where I think truth points her finger. 

As to my theory of inherent bacteria, whether it be right 
or wrong, it is a matter of small moment, provided I have 
shown that a close root-pruned tree, if treated rationally, will 
never afford the conditions for the development of any of 
those bacterial diseases, and in this I think I have succeeded. 
And now to the first cause, which I claim to be a radically 
wrong form of tree when set. 

The Revolution in Tree Planting. — It is about eight 
years since I first announced in Farm and Ratich that the 
theory and practice of tree planting, as handed down from 
time immemorial, was wrong, and that, instead of the more 
roots a tree has when reset the better, the very opposite was 
true. I then gave a full history of how I happened to hit 
upon this truth, as well as a detailed account of various ex- 
periments upon a great many kinds of fruit and shade trees, 
that demonstrated beyond all doubt the truth of my state- 
ment. I also adduced many isolated facts from the experi- 
ence of others going to corroborate my own. 

So absurd did the idea of cutting off all the roots of a 
tree seem even to very many prominent horticulturists, that 
though I then wrote to quite a number all over the country, 
the invariable answer was : " While such treatment may suc- 
ceed with you, it would be out of the question here." The 



CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 17 

fact is, we inherit our opinions and ideas just as well as the 
peculiarities of our bodies, and so true is this that the con- 
trary of their beliefs is positively unthinkable to many men. 
An instance of this came to me in a letter from one of our 
most progressive Texas nurserymen. He wrote: "I have 
been practicing close root-pruning with perfect success for 
some years, and yet my father, who is seventy years old, and 
sees the good results every year, won' t admit them, but persists 
in saying that 'if the roots were not necessary they wouldn't 
be put there.' " So firmly, indeed, has this long-root fallacy 
become imbedded in the human mind by ages of practice, 
that even a man of Chas. Downing's eminence in horticulture 
declares in his great work that the "ideal transplanting" 
would be to take up a tree with its roots entire. That this 
would be absolutely the very worst form, anyone can easily 
demonstrate for himself. Let him take, for instance, two 
peach or other tree seeds, and plant a few inches apart in, 
say a ten-inch pot of good, rich soil. At the end of next 
year, let him take them out and carefully shake off all the soil 
from the roots, and plant side by side in the open ground. 
Let him spread out in a large hole all the roots of one tree, 
according to the inherited regulation method, and cut back 
all on the other to about one inch, and the top to one foot, 
just enough to allow of its being stuck down about six inches, 
like a cutting. Treat alike, and in two years the root-pruned 
tree will be many times larger than the other. And right 
here I wish to say, very particularly, that the great superior- 
ity of close root-pruning is not always so apparent the first 
year, the tree giving more attention to striking deep roots 
than making top. Even for several years, we all know that 
trees as ordinarily set do well, but this is due to the fact that 
a large amount of root is removed even then. But a com- 
parison with these will prove that when the strain of fruit- 
bearing comes, the close-pruned tree, with its roots deep and 
strong, out of reach of the plow, winter's cold and summer's 
heat and drouth, will stand up for many years, giving good 
crops, long after the other, with its lateral and surface sys- 
tem, has broken down and died. How else are we to 



1 8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

account for the early decadence of our latter-day orchards ? 
The planter, in his haste for fruit, demands big trees, with 
plenty of roots and top, to support which, and to make them 
live, the nurseryman often transplants several times. This 
gives a mass of fibrous roots, which will undoubtedly, if the 
season is good, make the trees live, but practically dwarfs 
them and destroys their future usefulness. While Samson 
lost his strength by cutting off his hair, a tree is forever 
weakened by leaving its "hair" roots on when set, for it 
seems then compelled to re-establish itself by emitting new 
fibrous roots entirely from these. This results in a perma- 
nently lateral and surface system. Sink a spade around such 
a tree a year, or even two, after planting, and a slight pull 
will lift it from the ground, but a short root-pruned tree will 
resist any effort. The whole theory of the latter method is 
simply copying nature. She starts her trees from seed with 
neither tops or roots, and universal experience has shown 
that these, and trees grown from cuttings (which are prac- 
tically seed), if never moved, are the strongest, healthiest, 
longest-lived and most productive. The advantages I claim 
for this method over the all-important one of giving far 
better trees are : 

1. An enormous saving to the nurseryman in digging 
his stock, which now must be taken up with roots a foot or 
more long. 

2. An equally great saving in packing. Instead of 
great bales of tops, roots, moss, bagging and rope, and the 
labor of putting up the same, or large boxes containing thou- 
sands of pounds of the same useless dead weight, a thousand 
root- and top-pruned trees could be packed in a medium-sized 
tight box, with a layer of wet moss in the bottom to main- 
tain a moist atmosphere, and shipped with perfect safety 
around the world. 

3. The saving to the buyer will be even greater. As 
an instance, several years ago I ordered five thousand grape 
vines from California, and wrote specific directions for root 
and top-pruning, as well as packing, and offered to pay for 
the extra pruning, the box to be sent by express. The nur- 



CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. IQ 

seryman, setting me down for a crank or fool, packed the 
vines, top, roots and all, in three immense bales, weighing 
1,300 pounds, for which he got a special rate, and yet they 
cost me sixty-seven dollars charges. I pruned and packed 
them in a single bale weighing 227 pounds, shipping them 
250 miles, after which they were set by being simply stuck 
down into shallow, pulverized ground and tramped, the whole 
operation taking but two days. Every vine grew, and the 
next summer, the third year, I expect to ship grapes by the 
car load. It would be hard to estimate how many hundreds 
of thousands of dollars are annually paid by planters to rail- 
roads, in charges on worse than useless tops, roots and 
packing. 

4. Thousands of dollars will be saved in the plant- 
ing. Instead of large holes, and spreading out of roots, 
working in the soil by hand, etc., as now practiced, the 
planter will prepare his ground, stretch a strong line, with 
tags tied at the right intervals, make a small hole with a 
dibble a couple of inches in diameter, stick the trees down 
the proper distance, and when a row is done turn back and 
tramp thoroughly. This is very important. 

5. Another most important advantage is, that by this 
method we reduce to a minimum the danger of spreading all 
kinds of diseases and insect pests, such as eel-worm, root 
tumor, scales, root-lice, etc. These are mostly found on 
the tops or long roots. 

6. It enables the planter to set extra-large trees, which 
the nurseryman now has to throw away, and thus obtain 
fruit much sooner. 

I will now repeat directions for root-pruning. Hold the 
tree top down, and cut all roots back to about an inch, slop- 
ing the cuts so that when the tree is set the cut surface is 
downwards. Experience has shown that the roots are gene- 
rally emitted perpendicularly to the plane, or surface of the 
cut. This final pruning should be done shortly before plant- 
ing, so as to present a fresh surface for the callus to form on. 
If trees are to be kept some time, or shipped by a nursery- 
man, about two inches of root should be left, the planter to 



20 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

cut back as directed when the tree is set. About a foot of 
top should be left. More or less makes no difference. If the 
tree is well staked, three feet may be left without diminishing 
the growth much. I have had six-foot trees, well staked, to 
grow finely, but to avoid staking and to secure a new, 
straight body, it is best to cut back short. Let all shoots 
grow until a foot or so long, when the straightest and best 
one should be left and all others rubbed off. I could give 
the experience and endorsement of quite a number of orchard- 
ists who have practiced this method with uniform success, 
but it is necessary to mention only one. Without waiting 
for the slow demonstration of experience, he at once put it in 
practice on his great nine hundred-acre peach orchard of one 
hundred thousand trees, which he was about to plant in 
Georgia. I wrote him recently as to how it turned out. 
Here is the reply : 

Dear Sir : I am glad to state that the close root-pruning, which 
was practiced when planting our entire orchard of one hundred thou- 
sand trees at Fort Valley, Georgia, proved to be the most successful 
operation we ever practiced, less than one-half of one per cent, of 
the trees failing to grow, and all making the most vigorous and even 
growth I have ever seen in any orchard in America. The orchard is 
now three years old, and gave us an enormous crop of fruit this past 
season. I am thoroughly in favor of this system of root-pruning. 
Yours very truly, J.H.HALE. 

And now, in conclusion, in view of the fact that my indi- 
vidual efforts for eight years have amounted to practically 
nothing, the question is, how to bring about, in the general 
handling of trees, this radical but needed reform. I see but 
two ways. The first through the medium of the nurseryman 
and his catalogue, and the second through the bulletins of 
the experiment stations. 

Quite a number of nurserymen, some of them the most 
extensive in the Union, have written me that they are now 
practicing this method exclusively, and with perfect success, 
in all their nursery transplanting operations, but they dare 
not advise the people to adopt it, for fear of being accused of 
trying to induce them to kill their trees, so as to sell them 
more next season. Now, let all of them make mention of the 
subject in their future catalogues. Next, let the state experi- 



CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 



21 




TREE GROWN FROM A ROOT-PRUNED 
ONE, AT END OF FIRST YEAR. 



TREE GROWN FROM A LONG-ROOTED 
ONE, AT END OF FIRST YEAR. 



22 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

ment stations make exhaustive trials on all kinds of trees, 
vines and small fruits, planting some with mere stubs of roots, 
half an inch, and others with five, ten, fifteen and twenty-inch 
length, setting enough of each to allow of taking up some 
every year to demonstrate at once that be5'ond a length of one 
inch, the quantity and size of the new roots is invariably in 
an inverse ratio to the amount of old roots left on. The 
more and longer the old, the more lateral and weaker the new 
ones. Let them subject trees of different ages and lengths of 
tops, up to four or five years or more, to the same treatment, 
and the result will be the same. The older close root-pruned, 
even with four-foot tops, will, if staked, quickly re-establish 
themselves on strong, deep, new roots and make fine trees, 
while the same age long-rooted ones will become permanently 
surface-rooted and dwarfed forever. But it is much better to 
cut back the tops to one foot, and form an entirely new head, 
as from a seed. 

In planting an orchard of any fruit after this method, I 
would most earnestly advise, even on ground thought to be 
rich, that each tree be well top-dressed, after being set, with 
cotton-seed meal, well rotted barnyard manure, or other fer- 
tilizer, except fresh stable manure. ^wX. never put manure of 
any kind, except plain bone meal, in the hole or around the base of' 
a close root-prufied tree, and see then that it is well mixed with 
the soil. This fertilizing will force a strong initial growth, 
and thus induce the trees to strike many and deep, perpen- 
dicular roots, and if correctly root-pruned, as shown by the 
tree I hold in my left hand in the cut, few or no lateral roots 
will be emitted for several years, the trees confining their at- 
tention entirely, by instinct, to anchoring themselves deep in 
the moist earth, thus enabling them to resist any drouth, and 
face unmoved the fiercest storms. No wind can shake or 
loosen the hold of a close root-pruned tree, no matter how 
high the future head, or long the trunk. Such trees will make, 
as they did for Mr. Hale, a perfectly uniform growth, and if 
propagated from bearing trees, as all should be, will all come 
into bearing at the same time, and mature to full size, with- 
out thinning, crops that would paralyze trees planted with 



CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 23 

long roots. Of course, removing some of the smaller fruit 
would somewhat increase the size of the balance, but all will 
be large, and thinning might be necessary only to keep the 
limbs from breaking. Give full distance between the rows of 
all close root-pruned fruit trees, and run them north and 
south, if practicable. Trees propagated from settled bearing 
ones will fruit full the third year for peaches, apricots and 
plums, and the fourth or fifth year for pears and apples, and 
it will be economy to plant in the rows of the latter fruits an 
extra tree between, to fruit for five or ten years, until those 
intended to make the permanent orchard require the space. 
Air and sunshine are necessities for bright, clean, high-col- 
ored fruit, and shade breeds fungi, except on grapes, which 
often thrive in it. 

I append the following note of comment on the above 
article by that prince of careful, painstaking originators, 
whose name is known and honored wherever fruit is grown, 
Mr. Luther Burbank, to whom I sent a copy at the time. 

Santa Rosa, January 8, i8g6, 
H. M. Stringfellow. 

Dear Sir — Thanks for your courtesy in sending me your very val- 
uable and thought-suggesting essay. From my own past experience, 
I believe you are right. I have used for years a one-inch root and 
five-inch scion for root-grafting, and, strange to say, in an experi- 
ment ten years ago to test the matter, I used one-inch roots with 
five-inch scions, and from the same lot of roots and scions some 
three-inch roots and three-inch scions. In the long rows thus under 
test, I could see no difference (apple and pear) in the stand, but in 
the case of the pears, the shorter roots produced the largest and best 
trees. Apples were nearly alike. I usually cut back very heavily, 
but so far have not practiced such heroic treatment as you suggest. 
But as I said before, think you are right, and shall test it here. If 
it be true, what a grand result your studies have led up to, and in 
any case can result only in good ! 

Sincerely yours, 

Luther Burbank. 



CHAPTER V. 

Right and JVrong Close Root-Pruning. 

1WISH particularly to call attention to the fact that the 
chief object in close root-pruning is to concentrate all 
the vital energy of the newly set tree on a limited root- 
surface, and compel it to strike several strong, perpendicular 
tap-roots, and while doing this, not to allow its attention to be 
diverted to forming side or lateral roots at the same time. 
By examining the accompanying illustration, Fig. i, it will be 
seen that all seedling and transplanted trees should be cut 
back close below the collar, and just under the first good side 
roots, and not leave any length of the main or tap-root, with 
side roots cut back, as in Fig. 2. Such trees will invariably 
at once strike a great many lateral and surface roots also, 
while the properly root-pruned tree will, the first season, con- 
fine itself almost entirely to making strong, deep ones, with 
perhaps less top, though the second year will always remedy 
that. If the trees should be too large to root-prune with the 
shears or knife, saw off the tops to fifteen or eighteen inches, 
lay the tree on its side, and saw off all the roots squarely just 
below the crown or collar. Trim the sawed edges with a 
knife to make them callus more quickly. As stated else- 
where, large trees can be treated thus, as six-year-old pear 
and grape vines at Hitchcock are now fruiting, that have 
renewed their strength like young trees, it being a general 
law of nature that once a tree, especially an old one, is taken 
from the ground, the old roots are an encumbrance, and its 
former strength, vigor and health can only be renewed by 
compelling it to re-establish itself, as before, on an entirely 
new system. 

And now, in answer to many inquiries as to the size of 
trees which may be successfully transplanted. If closely 
root-pruned, there is scarcely any limit. While universal 

{24) 



RIGHT AND WRONG CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 



25 



experience has shown, beyond all doubt, that fruit trees and 
grape vines over three or four years of age, if set with long 
and fibrous roots, are inferior to smaller ones, the rule by no 
means holds good with close root-pruned trees, for a very 




I-YEAR OR OLDER ROOT-PRUNED TREE. JUNE-BUD OR SEEDLING ROOT-PRUNED TREE. 

valuable and important point in close root-pruning is, that it 
can be utilized to make living fence posts for newly enclosed 
farms, fields or orchards. A china, cotton-wood, willow, 
hackberry or sycamore, and, I presume other forest trees of 



26 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

large size, even six inches or more in diameter, can be dug, 
all the roots cut back close to the body and tops to five or six 
feet, and planted quite deep, just like a fence post, well ram- 
med, and wire stretched, and every one of the trees named 
will grow off quickly and make nice heads by fall, and large 
trees the second season. Every orchard should have such a 
windbreak around and through it at wide intervals. Not an 
evergreen one, to keep off the cold, but a deciduous one, to 
break the force of summer and fall winds, that every year 
lash thousands of bushels of half grown and also ripe fruit 
from the trees. I lost in a single storm, some years ago, over 
two thousand bushels of pears, blown down in an hour and 
buried in the mud. The cottonwood is by far the best of all 
trees here for such a windbreak, as it grows very tall, and 
will stand any storm, if grown from cuttings or root-pruned 
trees. If care be taken to select cuttings from male trees, 
the nuisance of seed and cotton will be avoided. I had at 
Hitchcock two ten-acre orchards of Garber and Le Conte 
pears, that were both bisected each way with cottonwood 
when the pear trees were set, thus cutting each ten-acre lot 
into four blocks of 23^ acres, surrounded now on all sides 
with tall trees, that let in the breezes for comfort, but com- 
pletely break the force of driving summer winds, that would 
blow off the fruit. In fact, to plant an orchard without 
proper protection is pure gambling, as the Missouri and 
Arkansas growers found out last fall. Car load after car load 
of windfall Ben Davis and other apples were shipped here 
last October, that had been whipped off by a strong wind 
storm that swept those states. While the roots of such a 
windbreak would be objectionable on vegetable ground, they 
do no harm at all to fruit trees, if occasionally fertilized, as is 
clearly shown in my orchards. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Best Time and Depth to Plant. 

1AM afraid that many persons will make the mistake of 
planting their close root-pruned trees too deep on level 
ground, under the erroneous impression that, having 
so little root, such a tree will find it difficult to establish 
and sustain itself at first. If they will but reflect that the 
root-graft and the cutting, which will strike, have no such 
trouble, and that nature plants her seeds upon the bare sur- 
face of the firm ground, and trusts to the wind, with leaves 
and dust, and the rain, to splash a thin covering around or 
over them, they must see that a strong, close root-pruned 
young tree, with far more vital energy than a seed, cannot 
fail to take care of itself, if set five or six inches deep in soil 
at all moist and well firmed. Of course, if it be dry that 
depth, the trees must be watered when set. But this applies 
to sections of the country favored with a reasonably regular 
rainfall, and more particularly to level and only slightly roll- 
ing ground. On elevated uplands and hills, the depth should 
be increased a little, and all through the dryer, hilly half of 
our state, comprising West and Northwest Texas, a depth of 
one foot would be none too much. Of course, this would 
require a total length of eighteen to twenty-four inches of 
tree when set. That deep planting is best all through the 
latter portions of the state, with its rocky, limestone subsoils, 
was clearly demonstrated by Wm. Cook, of Lampasas, one 
of the most successful and observing fruit-growers I ever met. 
I camped for a month near his orchard, in the suburbs of 
Lampasas, fifteen years ago, and was told by him that the 
finest, longest-lived and most productive trees of all kinds he 
ever grew were planted two feet deep, right up on the rocky 
hillside and top, and that he had practically drilled the holes 
out of the almost solid limestone soft rock. A little top soil 

(27) 



28 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

was put into the bottoms, trees were set two feet deep, the 
holes filled two-thirds with surface soil, and a bucket of water 
to each hole, the weather having been dry for a long time. 
After the ground had settled, the holes were filled level and 
well firmed with the foot. The trees, of all kinds, not only 
all grew, but no drouth afterwards even seemed to affect 
them. The roots had necessarily been cut back quite short, 
though he''^ new nothing of the virtue of the method. Of 
course, such treatment would be ruinous on level or moder- 
ately rolling ground with a clay subsoil. No amount of rain 
can ever water-log the rocky, porous subsoils of West Texas 
hills, and trees of all kinds should be planted at least twelve 
inches deep or deeper, all through that section. The rich val- 
le)'s should be avoided for fruit, not only because of occa- 
sional excessive rains, that for a few days render them a bog, 
but worse still, because such locations are so subject to late 
spring frosts as to render crops too uncertain. 

And now, as to the best time for planting close root- 
pruned trees in the southern states. If asked the very best 
month, I would say December. The young trees to be 
moved have then gone completely to rest, and while the 
ground is still warm enough to encourage root action, the air 
is not sufficiently warm to stimulate a new growth of leaves 
after planting, which often happens to trees moved in Novem- 
ber, especially if from a more northern latitude. Still, Jan- 
uary is nearly as good a month, and all through February 
and March, up to the very starting of the leaves, if the soil 
is moist, such trees may be planted with perfect success. But 
they will not grow off as rapidly, or make as great a total 
growth that season, as those planted earlier. At the North 
and in the Middle States, as Prof. T. L. Brunk remarks else- 
where in his article, if trees with so little root to hold them 
down are set in the fall, especially on deeply pulverized soil 
(a worse than useless preparation), there might be danger of 
heaving from the action of frost. But that heaving could 
easily be obviated by banking the earth up entirely over the 
one-foot tops, thus protecting them the first season from the 
cold, and mice and rabbits as well. The advent of hot 



BEST TIME AND DEPTH TO PLANT. 29 

weather is so sudden there that I would earnestly recommend 
the fall for planting close root-pruned trees all over the Mid- 
dle and Northern States. B}^ spring new roots several inches 
long will have been struck, and a much stronger growth 
secured the first season. As will be seen from Prof. Brunk's 
experiments in Maryland, his trees were all planted, both 
fruit and evergreen, on the i6th of April, 1892. That was 
entirely too late to get the best result the first season. More- 
over, something must have been wrong with the trees or con- 
ditions, when the althea failed to start and do well, for it 
grows almost anywhere like a weed, from a cutting even. 
As to the Norway spruce, hemlock and Lawson cypress, 
I know nothing, having never seen them. But I do know 
that the oranges both sour, sweet and trifoliate, will all grow 
off with the greatest vigor from close top and root-pruned 
trees, and thousands of orange trees are being thus treated in 
Florida the present season. They may also be thus planted 
all through June, July and August with perfect success, if an 
additional inch and a few fibrous roots are left on. Last 
summer I never lost a single one of fifteen hundred young 
trifoliata, planted from seed in February and transplanted 
into nursery rows in June, when about six inches high. By 
fall some of them were three feet high, all having been root 
and top-pruned when set, and firmly tramped. However, 
with these and other evergreens each one can experiment for 
himself, as soil may have something to do with results. 

Having now discussed fully the first cause — viz., long 
roots— of the general decadence and unfruitfulness of latter- 
day apple and pear orchards, and given a summar)'^ of my ex- 
perience as to the best methods of treating and planting close 
root-pruned trees, I will in the next chapter go on with the 
investigation. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Deep Preparation Wrong. 

AND now to the second cause of deteriorated orchards, 
which I claim to be the deep plowing and pulverizing 
before planting, either of the whole orchard or of sev- 
eral feet where the tree is to stand, in the shape of large 
holes. It is, indeed, true that such preparation is necessary 
for long, fibrous-rooted trees, such as our nurserymen now 
furnish by once or twice transplanting, for such trees invari- 
ably re-establish themselves on fibrous roots from the old ones, 
being unable to penetrate a firm surface or subsoil. More- 
over, such a loose, well pulverized hole, or entire plant-bed, 
will undoubtedly enable such trees to take hold and make an 
excellent growth, and bear well for some years ; but such 
preparation is entirely artificial, opposed to nature, and 
infallibly lays the foundation for permature decay and death. 
In furnishing the trees described a loose, porous seed-bed, 
we induce, in fact compel, them to confine themselves 
almost entirely to it. I saw a most remarkable example 
of this several years ago, near Seguin, in this state. A most 
painstaking fruit-grower had prepared a peach orchard after 
this fashion, the trees being trimmed high to allow of cultiva- 
tion, and the fourth and fifth year gathered crops of excellent 
fruit. In the summer of the sixth a terrible rain and wind 
storm swept over that section and laid every single one of 
those peach trees flat on the ground, with their roots in the 
air. I wish every fruit grower could have seen this orchard, 
with its surface and lateral root system scarcely one foot in 
depth, having had no hold on the subsoil, excepting through 
its fibrous roots. Doubtless many have had such an experi- 
ence. But suppose these trees had not fallen? Is it not a fair 
presumption that their roots, standing for several days in 
almost liquid mud, under a July sun, would have been injured? 

(30) 



DEEP PREPARATION WRONG. 31 

But suppose such an excessive rain had fallen at the North, 
and the thermometer had dropped below zero, freezing this 
one foot of slush and roots as solid as a rock ? Is there any 
wonder that trees exposed to such conditions for a few years, 
and, as a rule, allowed to overbear, should soon yield inferior 
crops, and die young ? While the peach would suffer most, 
no tree can stand such treatment uninjured. So much for 
reason and experience against a deeply-stirred surface soil. 

Now, let us turn to nature. As I said before, she plants 
her trees with neither tops or roots, on the surface of the 
firm, unbroken soil, and whether it be an apple or an oak, in 
the valle3's or on the hills, she grows a tree unequalled by all 
the care and skill of man. Who subsoiled and pulverized for 
the giant red-woods of California, the towering pines of Ore- 
gon and the South, the monster sycamores and cottonwoods 
of the Middle States, or dug wide holes and spread out their 
roots, carefully fingering in the top soil, for the grand old 
hickories, walnuts, elms and oaks that once crowned New 
England's rock-ribbed hills? True, these are forest trees; 
but how about the old original Seckel pear, the old apple tree 
that shaded Roger Williams' grave, and hundreds of ancient 
seedlings, of both fruits, that gave bounteous yield to three 
and four generations of the Pilgrims' sons ? So much for 
nature's testimony in favor of a firm, unbroken soil. 

But while all those trees were seedlings, I claim that the 
close root-pruned tree is far better than a seedling. The life 
force of a seed, while capable, ultimately, of the grand devel- 
opments I have named, is primarily very weak. Who would 
suspect that the great Charter Oak lay wrapped in the tiny 
acorn, which probably made scarcely a foot of growth the 
first year, or that the embryo sycamores and cottonwoods 
that tower in the river bottoms of the Middle States once 
floated down, almost as light as the air itself, and the first 
year made but a few inches of growth? And yet a close root- 
pruned Cottonwood tree or a cutting will, in this section, often 
grow ten feet high the first year. The potentiality of life in 
the root-pruned tree is many times greater than in the seed, 
and it has the additional advantage of striking several deep 



32 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

tap-roots instead of one, at the same time sending them 
much deeper than a seedling will. I have repeatedly dug Le 
Conte pear trees thus treated in spring, and by fall found four 
feet of almost perpendicular roots, and then left them still 
going down. (See the pear tree I hold in my right hand, page 
eleven.) I once dug, on the 3rd of July, a spring-set tree, 
and broke the roots at three feet below the surface, and this 
on unbroken prairie sod, with a so-called hard-pan subsoil, 
into which a post hole could not be dug except with a ground 
auger ! The grass was killed with a hoe and the ground kept 
clean with the same, and top-dressed well with cotton-seed 
meal raked in. The top measured four feet when dug. The 
penetrating power of tree roots is almost incredible. Nobody 
here, on Galveston Island, where ground cisterns are often 
used, will dare to plant a willow or china tree an3'where near 
one. I saw an instance where a willow had driven its roots 
through a twelve-inch brick and mortar wall and filled up the 
interior almost entirely. I could fill this entire chapter with 
instances of the wonderful penetrating power of root-pruned 
trees, to which the firmest soil seems to oppose not the 
slightest obstruction, but will cite only one — a Herbemont 
grape vine at Hitchcock, grown from a cutting, where it 
stood for six years, and of large size. I cut the roots to one- 
inch stubs and top to twelve inches, after planting about six 
inches deep the second time, in as small a hole as I could 
make, in ground never broken, at my back door. It was top- 
dressed with bone and ashes, after ramming as tight as a post. 
It grew two six-feet canes the first year, bore full the sec- 
ond, covered a thirty-feet trellis the third, and now rambles 
half over a large cottonwood tree, and has borne annually 
immense crops of grapes, with never a spraying or a sign of 
disease, while all the cultivated Herbemonts in the neighbor- 
hood rot nearly every year. It has had liberal dressings of 
bone and ashes for eight years, and been cultivated entirely 
with the hoe. 

As still further demonstrating the superiority of nature's 
method of a firm, unbroken soil for seedling and close root- 
pruned trees, I will say that a part of my Kieffer orchard at 



DEEP PREPARATION WRONG. 33 

Hitchcock, embracing about one-quarter of an acre, was 
originally a pond, which I had filled up fully two feet with 
good surface soil before the trees were set. I expected to 
see an extraordinary growth on this spot, and was greatly 
surprised, at the end of two years, to find them steadily fall- 
ing behind the balance, that stood on ground broken only 
four or five inches. To remedy this, to me, then, most mys- 
terious condition of things, I yearly applied an increased 
quantity of fertilizer to this spot, but without avail, and now, 
at the end of fourteen years, it is plainly discernible by the 
inferior size of the trees that stand upon it. 

I will now close this part of my subject with a letter 
recently received from Mr. C. B. Patterson, of Payne's 
Depot, Scott County, Ky. 

Mr. H. M. Stringfellow. 

Dear Sir — Having read with great interest your article in Texas 
Farm and Ranch on the subject of " A Deep Preparation of the 
Ground for Trees Wrong," please allow me to thank you for a per- 
fectly clear explanation of a mystery in horticulture that greatly 
puzzled my old father, now dead, as well as myself, and all my 
neighbors who know the fact. The old man was always a great lover 
•of trees, and as the black walnut is a natural growth here, wherever 
the squirrels hid the nuts in fall, around in the scattering woods, that 
stood on his virgin pasture soil, as they often did, he would fence in 
the young groves in spots where the trees came up, to protect them 
from the stock. In a few years, tall, vigorous, handsome walnut 
groves rewarded his care, with no other attention, for the young trees 
seemed to laugh at the blue-grass sod. But wishing to extend these 
plantings to a place neglected by the squirrels when they hid their 
winter store, my father one day announced his intention of beating 
Ihem as a tree grower, and accordingly fenced off several acres, 
which he had plowed and harrowed several times, and most 
thoroughly prepared. When all was ready the places were checked 
off, and, like the squirrels, he planted the nuts. They came up 
nicely, and had the best of attention for several years, when he 
turned them over to the grass as the squirrels' trees were. But all 
to no purpose, for from the very first, in spite of all his care, he never 
could make his trees grow like theirs, and died in total ignorance as 
to how or why they beat him. This was twenty years or more ago, 
and the trees are still standing here, to show for themselves, not 
more than half as high or large as those planted by the squirrels 
on the unbroken virgin sod. It affords me great pleasure to furnish 
you this living and unanswerable proof of the correctness of your 
position, that for tree seed, and, I presume, your close root-pruned 
trees, which you claim to be even superior to seed, a firm, unbroken 



34 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

soil, like nature chooses, is better than any preparation man can 
make. I will further add that about ten years ago I turned out a 
part of a cultivated field adjoining that woodland pasture, and the 
squirrels have tried their hands on it also, but with no better luck 
than my father, for the trees are just as scrubby and inferior to those 
alongside in the woods, as were his, and we call them "cornfield" 
walnuts, to designate their inferiority. 

Yours very truly, 

C. B. Patterson. 

A few days after receiving this letter, I came across the 
following, in the New York Sun, which was so strongly cor- 
roborative that I cut it out : 

The finest shipment of walnut for 1895 came from Texas, but as 
a rule Indiana walnut is the best. Kentucky has more than any 
other state, but it does not average as high as in Indiana. The 
largest walnut mill in the world is in Chicago, and it uses about three 
thousand car loads a year. Fifty dollars per thousand is about the 
average price for the best grade of walnut, and this is all natural 
forest grow t/i, what is known as "cornfield" walnut being hard, irregu- 
lar, and has more or less windshakes. Figured walnut is very 
costly, and is used for veneering. One man in West Virginia owns a 
figured tree which cost him one thousand dollars, for which he has 
refused three thousand, and asks four thousand, there being over six 
thousand feet of lumber in it. 

With all this indisputable evidence of the vast superiority 
of the firm, solid seed-bed, on which nature plants her trees, 
is it possible to resist the conclusion that, while poor, long, 
fibrous-rooted trees need soft ground and to be "fed with a 
spoon," the sturdy seedling and close root-pruned tree de- 
light to overcome the resistance of unbroken ground ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Cultivation. 

THE following remarks are intended to be of general 
application all over the country, but in regard to the 
peach, I would especially commend them to our coast 
country fruit-growers. If asked the very best location and 
treatment for a peach orchard here, I would answer most em- 
phatically, one broken just as shallow as possible, and with 
root-pruned trees, planted in as small holes as possible, and 
rammed tight. Or, better still, the unbroken prairie sod, the 
grass being killed for a foot or so where the trees are to stand, 
and the whole ground "cultivated " with a mowing machine 
often enough to keep the grass down to within four or five 
inches at the outside, and better less. Root-pruned trees on 
fairly well drained ground, thus treated and fertilized moder- 
ately, will live for many years and bear fine crops of large 
fruit, while those on deeply stirred soil and annually plowed 
will invariably die inside of six years ; at least those set with 
long roots will, and very likely the root-pruned also, for the 
peach cannot stand a loose surfaced, saturated soil in this 
level country. 

Having shown, first, that a long and fibrous-rooted is a 
radically wrong form of tree for planting ; and secondly, that 
large holes and a deeply pulverized soil, in which such trees 
are ordinarily set, and which they fill in a few years with the 
bulk of their roots, are receptacles for holding the semi-stag- 
nant water, often for days, even on well-drained ground, dur- 
ing and after continued heavy rains, followed by scalding sun- 
shine in summer and also intense cold in winter at the North, 
I will now take up the third probable cause of the early de- 
cline and death of many latter-day orchards, especially the 
peach, and that is, the annual more or less deep plowing to 
which nearly all are subjected, all over the country. 

(35) 



36 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

The almost universal practice is to plow at least once a 
year, and then cultivate more or less deeply until midsummer. 
While the trees are young and vigorous, and for the first few 
years of bearing, all such orchards give their best results ; but 
when once in full bearing, no surface-rooted trees, especially 
the peach, such as I am now describing, can stand the drain 
of a continual cutting of their roots and live long, or give 
fruit of marketable size unless heavily fertilized every year, 
and at least four-fifths of the crop removed by hand, early in 
the season. This is the system hitherto adopted by the suc- 
cessful peach grower, Mr. Hale, with his orchards grown from 
long-rooted trees, and by which method he manages to make 
them profitable for ten or twelve years. Having never tested 
it myself on close root-pruned trees, I am very curious to see 
how it is going to work on that immense orchard in Georgia, 
planted after my method and on ground hitherto skimmed 
over a few inches deep for corn and cotton, according to the 
usual southern style. For the benefit of those who never 
read of it, I will say that Mr. Hale, when the cotton was off, 
without any hole digging or additional plowing, simply in- 
serted a spade about six inches deep where the trees were to 
stand, and, pushing the handle back just far enough to allow 
of the little one-inch rooted trees being stuck down behind it, 
withdrew the spade and pressed the soil back firmly with the 
foot. Of course, the short roots must have rested flat on the 
so-called hard-pan or subsoil, that from creation's dawn was 
never broken. From what I have read, he is now subsoiling 
the middles, intends to plow every winter, and cultivate clean 
until midsummer, apply free dressings of bone and potash 
annually, and thin out the fruit severely b)'^ hand. I will 
watch the results with a great deal of interest. Ground be- 
comes boggy, after excessive rains, only just so deep as it has 
been stirred, and it will become so after such rains for many 
years, thus greatly increasing the danger of injury to the 
roots as the trees on subsoiled ground get older, as well as 
rendering it almost impossible to drive wagons over it, if a 
prolonged wet spell should occur when the fruit is ripe. 

But to proceed with the surface roots of fruit trees, the 



CULTIVATION. 37 

intimate relation between which and the fruit itself has been 
greatly overlooked. Every careful observer must have noticed 
that in orchards, even from long-rooted trees, while young 
and growing, the fine, delicate little feeding roots do not hunt 
the immediate surface like they do when the trees begin to 
bear. While the trees have nothing to do but to grow, these 
roots seem content to forage around six inches or more under 
the surface, and for this reason, plowing and deep cultivation 
during that period seems to do no harm, though cultivation 
deeper than necessary for killing grass and weeds is of no 
actual benefit to the root-pruned trees, nor in fact to any 
other, and may, on ground not perfectly drained, as noted 
above, do harm, after excessive rains. I have often wondered 
just what the relation was between each leaf and fruit and the 
root, and whether the former were not dependent to a certain 
extent on the good offices of certain individual roots on the 
surface. That in a general way the perfect development of 
the fruit does depend largely on these surface roots can easily 
be shown, by selecting a row of trees, for instance, in an 
apple orchard that has stood several years in sod. Plow one 
row five or six inches deep in spring, and cultivate and mow 
the others, never letting the grass get over four inches high. 
Fertilize neither, and unless apple trees act differently from 
peach and pear trees here, the fruit on the mowed land will 
be much the finest. As a further test, apply equal quantities 
of a good fertilizer to certain trees on the sod and cultivated 
ground, and the difference in favor of the sod will be surpris- 
ing. But, returning to the exact relation between the leaves 
and roots, the diagram on page 38 clearly shows that to a 
certain extent and in a general way there is such a correspond- 
ing relation. The diagram represents a bed or section in the 
Galveston City Park, through which I pass every day on my 
way down town. Having no particular use for the scrapings 
from the paved streets, the superintendent concluded to fertil- 
ize as well as raise the grade of the whole park about one 
foot. This bed was selected as the starting point, and load 
after load, largely composed of pulverized horse manure, was 
dumped and evenly spread about one foot deep and nicely 



38 



THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



raked off. A start was then made on the section adjoining on 
the left, but before it was completed a very heavy rain fell, 
thoroughly saturating the mass and wetting the sod ground 
below. In forty-eight hours, and before work was begun 
again, every leaf on the liveoak trees in the center began to 
turn brown, and in a week were as dry and dead as if they 
had been parched. Two cedar trees that stood about four 
feet from the edge were affected similarly, one losing all the 
foliage and the other about half. But the point to be noticed 
is that the two large liveoaks standing at the immediate angle 
of the two manured plots lost their leaves in a triangular 




This diagram represents a section of the Galveston City Park. The squares represent 
trees — i, i, the large liveoaks ; 2, 2, liveoaks ; 3, 3, the cedars mentioned in the text--the 
shaded portions representing living foliage, aud the unshaded dead. 

shape, just above and corresponding to the shape of the ma- 
nured ground below, while all the balance of the foliage on 
both trees over the unmanured ground is still fresh and green, 
though two months have gone by. An examination of the 
ground will be made next spring to see the effect on the roots, 
but so far the young twigs seem to be unhurt. A fair pre- 
sumption is that only the fine hair roots were hurt or killed by 
the ammonia, but the question is, if those had been fruit trees 
about to bloom in spring, would not the destruction of five or 
six inches of the surface feeding-roots by the plow instead of 
by the manure, have so weakened their vitality as to cause a 



CULTIVATION. 39 

failure of the fruit to set, or a subsequent shedding if the sea- 
son was bad ? Furthermore, suppose a severe drouth fol- 
lowed, as often does, would not the loss of those roots not 
only interfere greatly with the development of the crop that 
remained, but seriously impair the vitality of the trees them- 
selves ? In thousands of orchards over the country this pro- 
cess is kept up for years, tearing up the roots from spring till 
summer, then leaving the trees the balance of the season for 
replacing them, only to repeat the operation of destruction 
the next spring. 

After adopting a form of tree that induces or compels it 
to root shallow, allowing it to bear all it will, and furnishing 
it no extra supply of food, is there any wonder, after all this, 
supplemented by an annual ripping up of the roots them- 
selves, that orchards grow prematurely old ? Of course, I 
am now writing of the general run of orchards, to which 
there are thousands of honorable exceptions all over the 
country, both cultivated and in grass, where careful pruning 
and thinning of fruit, as well as a free use of manure and 
shallow cultivation, have attained the best results for a time; 
but the fact still stands that the profitable bearing period of 
all fruit trees has been steadily shortening of late years, and 
I feel confident that this is largely due to the three causes 
now given, aggravated by two others yet to be treated. 

I will now briefly allude to a few other benefits from plant- 
ing close root-pruned trees of all kinds on ground plowed as 
shallow as possible, or better, in virgin sod, if practicable, 
and mowing or cultivating shallow immediately around the 
trees from the day they are set, and a few years later putting 
the whole ground down to some kind of grass, whatever may 
be best for different sections, mowing close, at least until the 
fruit is gone, and-top dressing annually with some form of 
potash and phosphoric acid. Here Bermuda grass would 
head the list. I know of peach trees standing where they 
came up in this city, in a compact Bermuda sod, that has 
been closely cut with a lawn-mower for twelve years, that are 
to-day pictures of health and vigor. They have been moder- 
ately pruned, have never failed of a heavy crop, have never 



40 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

been thinned, and yet fruit is always large and fine. From 
time to time the lawn has been manured. Trees of this age 
that were set with long roots and plowed regularly afterward 
can nowhere be shown in this whole section. In fact, six 
years is the utmost limit, in this level country, of the latter 
treatment, and the fruit is far inferior. 

One great advantage of the above general system for all 
fruit trees is that no tree trunk will ever sun-scald. This 
comes entirely from the inability of a tfee grown from long 
roots and annually plowed, to supply a free enough flow of 
sap, during hot and very dry weather, to prevent stagnation 
and scald on the side exposed to the afternoon sun. A close- 
pruned tree, with its deeply penetrating roots, will never fail 
to do this. 

A second advantage is that fruit grown on trees standing 
in firm soil, undisturbed, will in rainy seasons be of far better 
eating and shipping qualities than that from trees whose roots 
are gorged with water, in a deep, loose soil, no matter though 
well drained. This I know to be a fact. 

A third advantage will be a great increase in the hardiness 
of all fruit trees in northern latitudes. I am confident all 
varieties, especially the peach, can be grown with perfect 
success where now they winter-kill every year. 

A fourth advantage is a firm roadway for hauling out the 
fruit in wet weather. 

A fifth and final advantage is economy. Far superior fruit, 
and at a cost of twenty-five cents on the dollar, as compared 
with old methods and long-rooted trees. 

As going to show that these principles are true, and that 
there is an increasing feeling of doubt and dissatisfaction 
with present methods and their results as exemplified in the 
orchards of to-day, grown, as all of them are, from long-rooted 
trees, several years old when set, I will close this part of my 
subject with a quotation from the April issue of Green's 
Fruit Grower, published at Rochester, in the center of the 
great fruit-growing district of Western New York. Mr. P. 
C. Reynolds, a regular contributor, and evidently a horticul- 



CULTIVATION. 4I 

turist of long and wide experience, writing of their present 
unproductive apple orchards, says : 

" In my earliest recollection, little thought was given to the cul-, 
ture of the orchard for the orchard's sake. So long as profitable 
crops could be grown among the trees, the orchard was cultivated. 
When cropping ceased to be profitable, cultivation ceased, or if any 
was done, it was done by the snouts of swine. And yet I can hardly 
recall a season, during the first twenty-five years of my life, that 
apples were not abundant. Some seasons, certain favorite varieties, 
like Early Harvest, Sweet Bough, Fall Pippin, etc., bore heavier 
crops than in others, but they were rarely entirely barren. 

"The older members of the Western New York Horticultural 
Society will remember how often this subject came up before the 
society from twenty to twenty-five years ago. Patrick Barry, John 
J. Thomas, Elisha Moody, J. S. Woodward, S. D. Willard, and many 
other gentlemen, eminently successful fruit-growers, urged the im- 
portance of thorough cultivation and, after the trees should become 
so large as to require all the ground, making the growing of annual 
crops unprofitable and inconvenient, they would continue culture for 
the benefit of trees and fruit. On the other hand. Dr. E. Ware 
Sylvester, Henry E. Hooker, Godfrey Zimmerman, James A. Root, 
and a few others, insisted that after apple trees have reached bear- 
ing age, as much, or more, fruit could be produced by seeding down 
to grass as by cultivation, provided no grass was removed from the 
orchard, but was mowed and left upon the ground as mulch, or pas- 
tured by hogs or sheep. The mooted question was never definitely 
settled by the society, but comes up frequently of late years. Both 
parties have been able to instance many proofs of their side of the 
controversy. From many years of observation among orchardists, 
and from my own experience, I have come to the conclusion that 
fruitfulness depends more upon several other conditions than upon 
cultivation, after the trees have arrived at bearing age. 

"Now, I would lend all possible encouragement for the feeding- 
roots of apple trees to ramify and forage freely in this surface soil, 
near enough the surface to be benefited by the heat of the sun and 
the vivifying effects of the atmosphere and its fructifying gases. I 
would be very careful not to drive those roots to the cold, inert, 
sterile subsoil, beyond the reach of the benign influences of that 
atmosphere of heat and gases that permeates the surface soil, where 
myriads of living organisms, in the humus, carry on the work of 
nitrification. Subsequent cultivation would be carried on with the 
purpose of avoiding the disturbance of the roots in their best feeding 
ground, and keeping the soil pulverized and mellow beyond the roots, 
for their future occupancy. I would leave, every year, a considerable 
space around every tree beyond that covered by the branches, to be 
filled by the season's growth of the roots, upon which I would plant 
nothing, for it is very poor policy to place the roots of annuals in 
competition with the roots of the trees for the plant-food and moist- 
ure of the soil. Hence, every year, the space around the trees, 
upon which no annual would be planted, would broaden until but 



42 THE NEW HOR'lICULTURE. 

narrow stripes between the rows of trees would be deeply plowed. 
Probably the soil above the roots could then be most economically 
kept mellow by means of a cultivator, or of some of the most effec- 
tive of modern harrows. When the time arrives that the roots of 
the trees nearly fill the soil, and the land should be entirely devoted 
to the trees and fruit, and the growing of temporary crops ceases, the 
question presents itself : 'Should the surface be still cultivated, or 
should it be seeded down ? ' If seeded to grass, I am quite positive 
that no grass, in any form, should be removed from the orchard ; it 
should be mowed frequently, and left as a mulch upon the ground, or 
it should be pastured closely with sheep or swine. Which of these 
species of animals it would be advisable to keep upon the orchard 
would depend largely upon the fruit-grower's ability to handle the 
animals with most profit. Most men would probably do better with 
swine than sheep. There has been less decline in the price of pork, 
for several years, than in the price of wool. If sheep were kept, 
mutton sheep are preferable. Mr. Woodward and many others claim 
that sheep are better gleaners of fallen apples and the insects they 
contain than swine. 

"Another question of momentous importance in connection with 
this subject is : ' Which would best conserve the moisture in the soil, 
a mellow surface or a surface covered with grass ? ' Experience 
would unhesitatingly say, a mellow surface. Yet, if the grass were 
mowed before it blossomed, and left spread upon the ground, as a 
mowing-machine leaves it, before the advent of the dry season, the 
mulch would afford nearly as much protection to the roots, perhaps 
quite as much, as a mulch of mellow soil. I really question whether 
it makes a great deal of difference in the productiveness of orchards, 
after they have come into bearing, and their roots pretty much fill 
the soil, whether the surface is kept mellow by frequent cultivation, 
or is seeded to grass and kept mulched, or pastured with sheep or 
swine, provided the trees are liberally supplied with plant food. Ac- 
cording to my observation for several years, since attention was 
called to this question, the most productive old orchards have been 
in sod. Whether the sod was an efficient cause of that productive- 
ness, or some other causes were dominant, I am unable to say." 

H. B. Hillyer, of Belton, Texas, closes a letter on the 

subject of "Cultivation of Orchards" as follows : 

" But is cultivation of a bearing orchard necessary ? May not 
Mr. Stringfellow be right ? I am leaning to that opinion. I have a 
beautiful orchard, thirty varieties of peaches, twenty of plums, twenty 
of grapes, twelve of pears, four of apples, five of figs, five of apricots, 
two of nectarines, two of blackberries. My orchard is cultivated 
nicely. I have some twelv'e or fourteen peach trees in my yard and 
chicken run. These have never been cultivated, but have been sur- 
face manured. Last year, on account of severe cold, fruit in all of 
this section was almost a failure, was an entire failure in my culti- 
vated orchard, while the trees in my yard and chicken run made good 
crops, some of them as much as four or five bushels. This season 



CULTIVATION. 43 

we had two white frosts, most of the Japan plums were killed, all the 
apricots are killed, and at least three-fourths of the fruit in the culti- 
vated orchard is killed and some trees have no fruit at all, and some 
hardy varieties have a fair crop, while all the peach trees in my uncul- 
tivated yards are full as they can bear of fruit. This experience of 
two years has at least convinced me never again to plow an orchard 
until all danger of frost is over. 

"My garden is very rich; is spaded every year with a prong 
spade. Dirt is not turned over, to avoid injury to the roots as much 
as possible. These trees have been carefully pruned ; have been shy 
bearers of fine fruit ; are five years old and are badly sun scalded — 
will barely live another year. 

"A negro man near me had an orchard a few years ago that he 
annually planted in corn or cotton ; the trees are all dead, but along 
his fence he put out some trees twenty-five years ago. They have 
grown in weeds that never have been plowed or hoed or mown down. 
These trees are still free from sun scald and bearing good crops of 
fine fruit. 

' ' What does all this mean ? " 



CHAPTER IX. 

Growing Trees from Bearing Ones. 

WHILE here and there over the country a few nursery- 
men recognize the advantage of propagating their 
stock from bearing trees, and advertise the fact in 
their catalogues, the great majority of propagators and buyers 
pay no attention at all to this important subject. There is 
not the slightest doubt that a tree grown either from a cut- 
ting, as the Le Conte and Kieffer are here, taken from a bear- 
ing tree, or one propagated by budding or grafting from such 
bearing tree, will fruit three or four years, often six or seven, 
before one grown from a young tree that has for a number of 
generations been grown from young ones that have never 
fruited. I drew attention to this important point five years 
ago in our local papers, and proved it beyond all doubt, by 
my own experience and that of quite a number of growers 
elsewhere. Since then I have been watching and experiment- 
ing in this line, and find that the fruit-bearing principle is 
carried just as fully by the bud as by the graft and cutting. 
Four years ago I gave a friend a seedling from a Kieffer pear 
tree, which bloomed the third year and bore the fourth. The 
second year of that seedling's life I took some buds from it 
and top-budded a young Garber pear tree in an orchard of 
three hundred of that variety and, just like the parent tree, 
the growth from those buds bloomed the third year, and bore 
fruit the fourth, though not a single Garber out of the whole 
lot showed even a blossom. Here is absolute demonstra- 
tion of the fact that even the bud from a bearing tree will 
carry the early-fruiting capacity in it. Again, in i8g6 in the 
spring, I took buds from an old, bearing orange tree, and put 
them into nine Trifoliata orange trees only two years old, 
here in Galveston, and now, March 6th, eight out of the nine, 
having made a good growth last season, are coming into full 

(44) 



GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES. 4-5 

bloom, though I do not expect them to set the fruit. Ordi- 
narily an orange from seed or from a young non-bearing tree 
takes eight or nine years to bear. Still another instance 
stands near my home in Galveston. J. C. Trube has two 
vigorous young Le Conte pear trees, now four years old. 
They bore quite a number of pears the second and third 
years, were full the fourth, and are now again white with blos- 
soms. Another friend, C. C. Petitt, told me recently that 
Le Conte pear trees I sold him seven years ago, which he 
planted at Dickinson, have bloomed but sparingly, but that 
others I sold him two years ago are white with blooms. The 
first lot were taken from my orchard before a large part of it 
began to bear, or before I knew anything of these facts, but 
the last, now in bloom, were propagated from the bearing 
trees. 

But it is useless to multiply instances which have been 
furnished me regarding the various fruits, all pointing the 
same way. While a single remove, or even a second one, 
from a bearing tree might not affect the time of bearing 
much, trees grown repeatedly and for years from young trees 
in nursery rows will certainly be much later in coming into 
bearing. This accounts fully for the fact that there are a 
great number of pear trees in this section now six, seven and 
eight years old that have borne little or no fruit, and pear as 
well as apple trees all over the country which have behaved 
the same way. The pear and apple are particularly affected 
thus, and, being naturally slow to bear, no cions or buds 
for propagation should ever be taken from young trees in 
nursery rows, or from other than healthy trees, that have 
come into full bearing. It is a great injustice to purchasers 
to thus keep them waiting for fruit years after the time when 
trees should bear. Every pear or apple tree grown from a 
settled bearing tree will bear full the fourth or fifth year at 
farthest. 

I will close this subject with several quotations, the first 
from an unnamed correspondent of The Rural New- Yorker, 
the second from Prof. L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, and the 
others bv the parties whose names are signed, all going to 



46 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

show the vast importance of propagating from the healthiest 
and most productive bearing trees, and never from trees in 
nursery, except new varieties, bearing wood of which cannot 
be had. 

Twenty-two years ago I set an orchard of 180 trees — one hun- 
dred Baldwin, forty Rhode Island Greening, and forty Northern Spy, 
the three most profitable apples, as I thought, to be set at that time. 
After the orchard had been set five or six years, I concluded to 
change the tops of the Northern Spy to Baldwin, as the Northern 
Spy did not do very well about here at that time. Having a few 
older Baldwin trees which were bearing fine crops of fruit, I selected 
scions from them, and soon had the tops changed. 

The result was that these trees commenced bearing five or six 
years sooner, have always borne double the quantity, and of better 
quality, than the trees that were budded to Baldwin at the nursery, 
and set at the same time, under the same conditions. While all are 
now fine, healthy trees, those that were budded to Baldwin at the 
nursery make the most wood growth, and the branches are longer 
and more reedy. I have also noticed that, while these trees seemed 
to have as much bloom, they would not perfect more than half as 
much fruit as those with the changed tops. Who will tell the reason 
of this ? — The Rural New- Yorker. 

It is probable that many trees fail to bear because propagated 
from unproductive trees. We know that no two trees in any orchard 
are alike, either in the amount of fruit which they bear or in their 
vigor and habit of growth. Some are uniformly productive, and some 
are uniformly unproductive. We know, too, that scions or buds tend 
to reproduce the character of the tree from which they are taken. A 
gardener would never think of taking cuttings from a rose bush or 
chrysanthemum or carnation which does not bear flowers. Why 
should a fruit-grower take scions from a tree which he knows to be 
unprofitable ? 

The indiscriminate cutting of scions is too clumsy and inexact a 
practice for these days, when we are trying to introduce scientific 
methods into our farming. I am convinced that some trees cannot 
be made to bear by any amount of treatment. They are not the 
bearing kind. It is not every mare which will breed or every hen 
which will lay a hatfull of eggs. 

In my own practice, I am buying the best nursery-grown stock of 
apples (mostly Spy), and am top-grafting them with scions from trees 
which please me, and which I know to have been productive during 
many years. Time will discover if the effort is worth the while, but 
unless all analogies fail the outcome must be to my profit. — L. H, 
Bailey. 

My Dear Sir — I have your letter of the seventh on my return 
from the North, and beg to say I have read with great interest Mr. 
H. M. Stringfellow's letter in the Alvin Sun, which was enclosed in 
your letter. 



GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES. 47 

I have fought Mr. S.'s battle here in Cahfornia. I know he is 
right. I have seen the same practice which he narrates appUed to 
the oUve, and only six berries were produced from an orchard of over 
thirteen hundred trees, after the most diligent and careful cultivation 
for six years, while cuttings which I planted at the same time (taken 
from old bearing trees) all bore fruit the third year. One tree bore 
eleven gallons the fourth year, and I have had trees bear twenty-three 
gallons the fifth year and a barrel the sixth year. The difference be- 
tween an orchard of thirteen hundred trees bearing six olives the 
sixth year and a single tree of the same age bearing a barrel, thirty-one 
gallons, of fruit, is worth noticing, and demands investigation. And 
yet, right here in Southern California, with all these facts before 
them, there are nurserymen who still persist in planting cuttings from 
trees which are now forty or fifty years old, which trees never pro- 
duced a hatful! of olives, which trees should bear one hundred gal- 
lons at a crop. 

I never plant a cutting from any tree which has not produced 
fruit, and I am perfectly willing to take cuttings from the oldest bear- 
ing tree in the country. I am ready to guarantee every tree I sell to 
bear fruit if planted here. I will guarantee 75 per cent, to bear the 
third year and every tree to bear the fourth year. 

Very truly, 

Frank A. Kimball. 

It often happens that when apple trees or an apple orchard has 
arrived at bearing age, from ten to fifteen years (according to va- 
riety) (?), while making a good growth of wood every year, they may 
fail to form fruit buds and bear fruit. In many instances trees have 
reached the age of twenty years or more, healthy, vigorous trees, 
that have not produced fruit enough to pay for the first cost of tree 
and transportation. Now there are a good many who would be glad 
to know if there are any means by which such trees can be made to 
bear. It is a well known law of vegetation that a rapid-growing tree 
or plant is inclined to make wood buds rather than fruit buds, and 
that sap has a strong tendency to flow into terminal buds rather than 
into side buds. It is a prevailing opinion of experienced horticultur- 
ists that any check of growth has the effect to promote the growth of 
fruit buds — reproductive organs. I have known instances where 
flourishing young orchards, that had always been under cultivation, 
and formed no fruit buds but annually a rank growth of wood, have 
been seeded down to grass, and fruitfulness followed in two or three 
years. The owners believed that the sod checked the too rampant 
growth of wood and induced the growth of fruit buds. Possibly 
they were right. Again, pear growers are well aware that, to make 
rapid growing pear trees fruitful, it is necessary to shorten-in every 
year's growth to promote the formation of fruit buds. This fact is 
so well known as to be unquestioned by well informed pear growers. 
Why may not the same methods be applied to apple trees ? I know 
that it would be a tedious operation to go all over the top of a large 
apple tree and shorten-in the previous year's growth, but, if it would 
cause a barren tree to become fruitful, it would be labor well ex- 



48 THE NEW HORTICULTURE, 

pended. I am well aware that many other causes have conspired, of 
late years, to prevent apple trees with an abundance of fruit buds 
from producing and maturing fruits — such as cold ; protracted rains 
when in blossom, preventing poUenation ; severe frosts while in bloom 
or afterwards ; fungus on young fruit, or on fruit stems or on the 
leaves ; but, when no bloom appears and no fruit buds are found, it is 
in vain that we look for fruit. The shortening-in process would not 
be necessary every year. If practical once or twice, it might throw 
the trees into fruitfulness, and then the check upon growth caused by 
bearing fruit might promote the formation of fruit buds. — P. C, 
Reynolds, in Green's Fruit- Grower. 

The unfruitfulness Mr. Reynolds here alludes to is plainly 
the result of propagating from non-bearing or unproductive 
trees. Instead of the "many other causes" why trees with 
an abundance of fruit buds fail to bear, if he had laid the 
trouble to the annual destruction of their surface roots by 
the plow and cultivator, upon which roots all trees depend 
for the setting of their fruit, he would have hit the nail on the 
head. Every fruit-grower can find evidence of this around 
him, and the experience of others elsewhere in this book con- 
firms it. While it is a fact that evaporation is less from a 
cultivated surface than one in a close-mowed sod, a fair test 
with a seedling or a root-pruned tree will demonstrate in 
every case that this loss of moisture is far over-balanced by 
the service rendered the tree by its unbroken surface roots. 
The superiority of all forest, shade and nut trees, as well as 
seedling fruit trees, in uncultivated ground proves this. But 
here let me again impress upon my readers that in all I have 
to say about non-cultivation and close mowing around fruit 
trees, reference is made solely to those grown from seed where 
they stand, or to close root-pruned ones. While it will cause 
surface-rooted trees to frequently shed their fruit, and will 
ultimately shorten their lives, cultivation for them is a neces- 
sary evil. 



CHAPTER X. 

Winter Budding. 

WHILE summer budding is one of the most common 
forms of tree propagation, a friend of mine, a most 
progressive horticulturist, James Hancock, of Bee- 
ville, Texas, has been for some time practicing a different 
method with perfect success in winter and early spring, before 
the sap begins to move or the bark will separate from the 
wood. I also tried this method in February and later with 
perfect success. He advises cutting off a little of the wood 
with bark from the stock, though I tried some with bark alone 
and all took. The accompanying cut (see next page) will illus- 
trate how it is done. Insert the knife into the limb or stock, 
just as if a bud was to be cut and draw it downward an inch or 
less, pressing the cut bark back a little to keep it open. (See 
Fig. 2, on limb.) The bud is then slipped down next to the 
cut surface to the bottom. It is best to make the bud fully as 
long or a little longer than the cut on the limb, and let the up- 
per end lap a little. The flap is then pressed back, and tied 
firmly, as in budding, completely covering the bud itself. Of 
course, the leaf stalk must be cut off close, just at the bud, so 
the flap will fit tight. Buds can be put in thus all winter, and 
especially in early spring, and not one in a hundred will fail. 
This method is especially valuable for budding large trees and 
limbs, instead of top-grafting, which is far more work, and 
less certain to succeed. An orchard can be cut back and very 
quickly changed into another variety of fruit at any point 
above the ground desired, provided the bark on the limbs is 
smooth enough to bud. 

The past spring, just before the leaves pushed, but when 
the buds were swollen, I saw five hundred four-year-old 
peach trees thus treated by top-budding without a single fail- 
ure. Five and six buds were quickly put into the main limbs 

(49) 



so 



THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 




WINTER BUDDING. 



WINTER BUDDING. 5^ 

on each tree, which were at once cut back to within a foot of 
the buds. These buds have now (May 5) made shoots three 
feet long. Whether this is absolutely necessary to arrest the 
movement of the sap, Mr. Hancock has never tested by leav- 
ing the limb entire, but as there is practically no movement 
in winter it would seem not. There would be no objection to 
cutting back in a cold climate, except dying off of limbs so 
cut in case of a freeze after the sap began to move from such 
severe pruning. Of course, after the buds have started well, 
the limbs should be sawed off with a sloping cut close above 
the buds, though the bud in the cut was not so treated. 
Enough shoots of the stock should be allowed to grow below 
to keep the tree healthy, which could be cut away later in the 
season or the following year. This method may be very valu- 
able to the orange growers of Florida in the ordinary propa- 
gation of trees, as budding by the common method often fails. 
It will also be exceedingly valuable for turning large trees of 
pecans and other nuts into the finer kinds, and must entirely 
supersede all orchard top-grafting, which, from the liability 
of the scion to dry out, is a very uncertain as well as trouble- 
some process, while this is quick, easy and certain. More- 
over, why could it not be used by nurserymen for budding 
during winter stocks that could not be dormant budded in 
the fall before? Or perhaps after the bark ceases to slip in 
the fall the work could be continued by this method then. 
Mr. Hancock has not found it as convenient or successful 
during the ordinary budding season as the common method, 
nor has he ever tried it during the winter before February 
here, but has had uniform success. At the North, perhaps 
just when the buds begin to swell would be an excellent 
time, and for the next month. I omitted saying that after 
inserting the bud and pressing the flap back, a small piece of 
cotton cloth dipped in beeswax should be laid over it and 
then tied firmly, as in common budding. That will prevent air 
and the rain from entering, and all will live. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Grafting. 

WHILE all the various forms of ordinary grafting are 
well understood, and need no description, there is 
a form practiced by my friend, E. W. Kirkpatrick, 
of McKinney, Texas, an old nurseryman and fruit-grower, 
that is so simple and uniformly successful with all kinds of 
trees and vines, that it deserves to be more widely known. 




SCION AND STOCK COMBINED. 



As seen from the illustration, if the stock to be grafted is 
growing in the ground, cut off the top as for saddle grafting, 
but with one of the sloping cuts, about twice as long as the 
other, as shown. Then make an incision into the side of the 
scion, which should be five or six inches long, about one-third 

(52) 



GRAFTING. 



53 



of the length from the top, and, inserting the lower end of 
the scion, sharpened as shown, into the ground, fit the cut 
place on to the stock, placing the long side of the cut surface 
of the stock next to the scion. Bring the edges together on 
one side, press the scion down firmly, and no tying will be 
necessary, but bank the moist earth well over the union, and 
pack. The scion then becomes practically a cutting as well as 
a graft, and generally takes root from the lower end, as well 
as unites with the stock. This method is equally suited for 
house grafting, if tied to keep the stock and scion together 
until planted. 

Another method, particularly well adapted to the vine, and 
a modification of cleft grafting, that rarely fails of success on 
the grape, done either in winter, spring, or after the vine is 
in full growth, provided the scions have been kept dormant. 
Select a smooth place on the vine near or just under the 
ground, and make a downward sloping cut, one-third or one- 
half through the stock, according to 
size, as shown in the illustration. A 
well-ripened scion with one or two buds 
is then cut as for cleft grafting, except 
that the cuts, are made sloping, so as to 
bring one side of the scion to an edge, 
which is to be inserted in the side cut of 
the stock, so as to bring the face or 
broad side of the scion flush 
and even with one edge of 
the cut in the stock. A few 
wraps of strong string will 
bring the surfaces on small 
stocks closer together, but 
large stocks will bind the scion 
tight enough. Cover the whole 
scion with moist earth until 




SIDE GRAFTING. 



growth starts, when the top should be cut away. I omitted 
to say that from the middle of September to the, middle of 
October here, perhaps August at the North, is an excellent 
time to graft all kinds of trees, with scarcely a failure. 



CHAPTER XII. 

IVhy Trees in Bottoms never Drown — Aeration. 

FEW persons, unless they have tested it, have any idea of 
that peculiar quality that soils never disturbed deeply 
have of holding water on the surface, in ponds, for 
instance, for years, and yet immediately after being drained, 
if examined, the ground will be found friable and ready for 
the plow just beneath. I once undertook to grow carp, and 
for two years kept a small pond filled with water ; but find- 
ing the venture a failure, and having drained the water off, 
the idea occurred to me to examine the bottom at once, and 
see how deep the mud was. To my amazement, it was only 
about three or four inches deep, and on being scraped away 
with a hoe, the bottom was actually ready for the plow. The 
few inches of previously stirred surface was mud, but the 
balance firm. This peculiarity of unbroken ground not tak- 
ing up and holding water in it in a free or mud state is a wise 
provision of nature, and accounts for the fact that wild grape 
vines and forest trees in river bottoms are often, for weeks, 
several feet under water without the slightest harm. Had 
such ground been deeply plowed, and especially subsoiled, 
trees in such locations would certainly be killed. But never 
having been disturbed, the particles of soil are in that pecu- 
liar natural relation to each other that, while they readily 
admit between them a certain quantity of water, and allow its 
passage through to the roots and subsoil, it is impossible to 
make such undisturbed ground take more than that specified 
amount, and so tree roots under such circumstances are not 
by any means standing in mud several feet deep, as many 
people ignorantly suppose. While I am sure all my readers 
can recall instances in their own knowledge of trees standing 
thus in water for weeks in low places, and apparently enjoy- 
ing the bath, a most remarkable instance was told me 

(54) 



WHY TREES IN BOTTOMS NEVER DROWN AERATION. 55 

recently by a gentleman, who knows of three pecan trees 
that have stood for two years on stiff land in North Texas, 
with about one foot of water continuously covering the 
whole surface of the ground for several hundred feet. They 
bear fine pecans just as regularly as other trees, which fall 
upon the water every year and are blown ashore by the wind, 
some of which he has thus gathered and eaten. Could that 
water be drained off and the earth examined below, it would 
be found practically just like any ordinary well-drained land 
after rain. Just that wet, and no more. Who doubts the 
fate of those trees if the ground had been deeply plowed and 
then thus flooded ? But to a limited degree for a few days 
after excessive rains, all deeply stirred land is in a condition 
of mud, and the fine fibrous feeding roots of all fruit trees on 
such ground must necessairly be either scalded and drowned 
out, more or less, in summer, or seriously injured by severe 
cold after such excessive rains in winter. After being once 
disturbed deeply, it requires many years to again compact the 
soil and bring it into its original state. This can easily be 
proved by examining, after continued rains, trees that were 
planted in large, deep holes, though it readily shows for itself 
if the rain be accompanied with a strong wind. In such case, 
fruit trees six or seven years or more of age are often twisted 
or bent half over from working in the soft earth, and some- 
times are blown flat. It is true that this is largely due to 
long roots when planted, but in any case such a saturated 
mud condition of deeply stirred soil cannot but be injurious 
to a tree, and is undoubtedly the chief cause of the develop- 
ment of the different forms of root tumor and rot now so com- 
mon in the South, and doubtless of yellows and black-knot, 
as well as other root diseases at the North. Could there be 
more convincing proof that the whole theory and practice of 
deep plowing and large holes for trees is wrong and contrary 
to nature, than the health, vigor and long life of forest as well 
as all chance seedling fruit trees on firm unbroken soil? 

But, referring again to the pecan tree in water, alluded to 
above, do trees need aeration ? While it is undoubtedly of 
great service to all soils in their preparation for crops, once 



56 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

in the ground there is not the sHghtest evidence to prove that 
the admission of air to the roots of any tree or plant by 
ploughing or cultivation is of any real benefit. The facts 
now given will show that the theory or belief that, somehow 
or other, an extra supply of air over and above that naturally 
contained in all firm soils is beneficial to tree roots in cultiva- 
tion is a mistake. I had a row of bearing orange trees many 
years ago, standing just behind my front fence, in the western 
part of the city of Galveston. After the great storm of 1875 
a vast amount of sand was washed up from the beach, close 
to which my place was situated, and deposited in the street 
just outside. By summer the strong south winds had blown 
the most of it through my picket fence, and banked it up from 
three to four feet around the bodies of the orange trees. 
Many people thought it would hurt them, but believing to the 
contrary, I leveled it all down nicely, leaving the bodies 
standing fully three feet in beach sand. On this was spread 
a heavy coat of barnyard manure. The next year those trees 
made a most remarkably strong growth, and continued to do 
well until killed by the freeze of 1886. 

Another instance occurred last fall. When passing along 
near the sidewalk of a friend in this city, who had a long row 
of live oaks five to eight inches in diameter standing on low 
ground which he was about to fill up, I saw that he had taken 
up about half of the trees, and raised them several feet, as 
the sidewalk was being filled in. I told him about my orange 
trees, and advised him to treat his oaks the same way. He 
did so, filling in with good earth from the mainland. The 
result was continued good health, and a fine growth the past 
season. While the filling on the public square with strong 
manure, as noted elsewhere, was very injurious, any quantity 
of soil can be placed around trees with safety, if not actual 
benefit. 

After all, is not cultivation really only a necessary evil ? 
For trees, facts clearly point that way. For certain annual 
crops, that grow when the weeds do, it is absolutely neces- 
sary to cultivate, to prevent the weeds from appropriating 
a large share of plant food and moisture, and also equally 



WHY TREES IN BOTTOMS NEVER DROWN AERATION. 57' 

important to shade the earth around growing plants, and 
keep down evaporation. Still, do we not, by inverting the 
soil and putting the humus at the bottom instead of the top, 
where nature puts it, and also by exposing the pulverized 
surface to the leaching of heavy rains, which carry off far 
more soluble plant food than is appropriated by the trees, 
really do our orchards more harm than good ? We cultivate 
and crop our lands until, if no fertilizer is added, they ulti- 
mately refuse to produce, and we turn them out as old fields. 
Nature then plants them with trees, and not only grows a 
vigorous crop from year to year, but rapidly renews the 
fertility of the soil itself by depositing vegetable matter on 
the surface where, exposed to air, heat and moisture, it is 
continually rendering plant food soluble, and returning it to 
the storehouse of the earth. Why, if nature can rear an 
immense forest growth on impoverished land, and in the 
course of time return it to us rich, cannot we grow fruit trees 
by the same method ? The leaves, grass clippings, and 
annual dying of the surface roots of the sod, leave the 
vegetable matter just where the elements can, through its 
decomposition, prepare food for the tree roots, to supplement 
which I propose an annual top-dressing. And yet, reason- 
able and natural as this treatment of an orchard is, men will 
theorize about the vast excess of evaporation from a sod sur- 
face over a cultivated one, and demonstrate to a certainty 
how superior the latter must be ; but nature laughs at them, 
with her vigorous and productive old seedling trees, in out- 
of-the-way places, while everywhere throughout the country, 
continually, cultivated trees become diseased early, fail to 
bear regular crops, and die young. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Grapes. 

AS TO grapes, and the adaptability of various kinds to 
the different sections of the country, it is certain 
that the practice of close root-pruning is going to 
make some radical changes. As remarked elsewhere, the 
grape becomes permanently very surface-rooted when grown 
from long-rooted vines, but roots exceedingly deep from a 
close root-pruned one. The question is, How far is this go- 
ing to influence the behavior of vines in given localities? As, 
for instance, it did the old Herbemont on my former Hitch- 
cock place. That vine, taken up when six years old, closely 
root and top-pruned and replanted, has made an extraordi- 
nary growth, and is bearing enormous crops every year. It 
is entirely free from all disease, while the same variety, as 
ordinarily planted and cultivated, rots in the neighborhood 
nearly every year. The general opinion in South Texas has 
been, that all the Labrusca and their hybrids are short-lived. 
As all those grapes bear very heavily, and are nearly always 
allowed to overbear, may it not be that this and long, 
fibrous roots are at the bottom of the trouble, if it be true ? 
Not caring to retain any of them after a fair test, and finding 
them unsuited for distant shipment, owing to early shelling 
of the berries, I always threw them out, having so many 
experiments on hand. Thus I never kept any of the La- 
brusca over four or five years. My tests of the American 
varieties included over fifty of the latest and most prominent, 
and out of the whole list, I would unhesitatingly select the 
Lindley for South Texas, as the very best early light-red 
grape, though it does not set its fruit well unless planted 
near or alternated in rows with a staminate variety, such as 
the Agawam or Salem. The two latter are by far the largest 
and best dark-red grapes, while Wilder easily stands at the 

(58) 



GRAPES. 59 

head of the blacks. The Niagara is the very best white or 
golden grape, being of larger size and more productive than 
Moore's Diamond, as well as a much stronger grower. These 
are the cream of all the American grapes, as table grapes, for 
South Texas. Of course, in the Gulf Coast and southwest- 
ern part of Texas, the old Herbemont and Lenoir or Black 
Spanish are the standard wine and arbor grapes, though they 
are of little value for market. But while all the grapes recom- 
mended above are excellent for home use and markets that can 
be reached in one day or less, it would be useless to plant 
them or any other American grape largely for more distant 
shipment. They will all shell off, or drop from the bunch, in 
our hot summer weather, after being gathered, at the end of 
that time. After July the northern and California grapes 
take our markets, and prices rule very low. While some of 
the Munson and other American grapes will hang quite late 
in the summer, it scarcely pays to leave them, on account of 
depredations by the birds, unless constantly watched. For 
wine growing, except on a small scale for local markets, we 
can never compete with California, as grapes are grown more 
cheaply there than here. But while most of the Vinifera are 
unsuited to Texas, except the southwestern portion, around 
Beeville and near the coast, where they are proving very suc- 
cessful, it is highly probable that the Chasselas de Fontaine- 
bleu will also prove at home in the eastern coast district, 
several vines being now in full bearing on Galveston Island. 

Grapes mature very early in the Southwest, the Chasselas 
coming in about the 5th of June, and in Galveston county but 
a very short time afterwards. Of course, all vines should 
be closely root-pruned, set in as small a hole as practicable, 
and well rammed. In the matter of training, they are almost 
exclusively adopting the California low head, no trellis, 
system, in Southwest Texas, and the same plan would 
answer well for the Chasselas in the eastern coast region. 
But all the American grapes seem to do better on somewhat 
longer pruning, though I know of vines that have given good 
crops on the above plan. As a rule, perhaps, the renewal 
system of several new canes, about three feet long for vines 



6o THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

in full bearing, trained fan-shape to a trellis of three wires, 
will furnish all the fruit that any vine should carry. I would 
earnestly caution against overbearing all through the life of a 
grape vine, and especially of young ones the first few 
years. This is the cause of the failure and early death of 
nine out of ten vines that break down. One good bunch to a 
shoot is all that should be left until the vines get strong. 

As to fertilizer, bone and potash will supply all the food a 
vine requires, and potash is especially important for their 
health. Where cotton-seed hull ashes or plenty of wood ashes 
can be had, there is nothing better. As to insects, the 
most serious enemy to the grape in the South is the leaf 
roller; and while he never attacks the smooth, thin leaves of 
the Vinifera, he rarely allows the woolly leaves of the 
Labrusca or its hybrids to escape. One spraying with Paris 
green and a little lime, at the rate of one pound of the green 
to one hundred or even one hundred and fifty gallons of lime 
water, when the berries are half grown, will be washed off 
before the fruit ripens, but will protect entirely until 
the fruit has been sold, when another will carry the 
vines through the summer. The birds are the only other 
enemy, and while there are not so many in Southwest Texas, 
they are exceedingly destructive everywhere else throughout 
the South. The very best remedy is to pepper them with peas 
from a gun, or very fine shot at long range, for a few days, 
.when the fruit begins to ripen. It is astonishing how quickly 
they will communicate the fact when they are struck. Dead 
birds, like dead men, tell no tales, but lives ones are quick to 
do it. However, it is highly probable that birds attack 
grapes much oftener to quench their thirst than to obtain food, 
and if shallow vessels of water are placed at intervals 
throughout the vineyard, the loss of fruit will be very small. 

In marketing the fruit, it should always be gathered in 
shallow boxes, with cleats on the ends for handles, so they 
can be piled up on each other, in hauling to the packing 
house. There it should remain over until the next day, to 
allow the stems to wilt, so that the bunches will lose their 
rigidity and pack more closely without bruising. All broken, 



GRAPES. 6l 

green or decayed berries should be clipped from the bunches 
with sharp-pointed grape scissors. The 5- and g^pound bas- 
kets are the most common packages, but they are not only 
more inconvenient for packing in the car, but are too close 
for the far South, in hot weather. The square box or crate, 
with four 5-pound baskets, such as seems to be in general use 
in California, is far better, and they should be well filled, so 
the cover will fit tightly, to prevent shaking. The catalogues 
will furnish a very extensive list for those who want variety, 
even though inferior grapes. 

But there is one other grand but neglected old grape for 
home use, both for the table and for wine. I allude to the 
Scuppernong, which, while it grows everywhere like a weed, 
has failed hitherto to set its fruit. The cause is now very 
plain. Simply the old trouble of pistillate blooms. Mr. S. 
N. Richardson, of Alvin, tells me that he has tried it, and 
named a party in Columbia who had the same experience on 
a large scale. If the common male Muscadine, which blooms 
just when the Scuppermong does, is planted close by, instead 
of dropping its fruit, as it always does, the latter will bear 
every year, and most profusely. This is a very important 
fact, for this famous old southern vine, if trellised, will cover 
an acre, and asks no other favors than a good annual dress- 
ing of potash in some form, and then to have its roots let 
alone. For chicken yard, around back doors, or wherever 
shade is desired, it will not only answer that useful purpose, 
but also bear loads of delicious grapes for wine or table use. 

As to distance for planting, eight feet each way between 
the Labrusca varieties will be sufficient, but twelve feet or 
more is best for the Herbemont and Lenoir in the immediate 
coast country. Around San Antonio and in Southwest 
Texas, however, they succeed well stump-pruned, like the 
Vinifera in California, but the climate is dryer in that portion 
of Texas, and vines are less subject to rot. While clean 
cultivation is now the rule, I propose planting a small vine- 
yard, as an experiment, with twelve feet between rows and 
vines four feet in the rows. After cultivating for a year very 
shallow, they will be put down to grass and mowed often 



62 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

enough to keep it short, and surface roots will not be broken 
again. There are many isolated vines thus treated that are 
bearing heavy annual crops with no spraying, while plowed 
and cultivated vines rot every year. In fertilizing, beware of 
cotton-seed meal or other manures rich in ammonia, as that 
element is very apt to produce rot in the fruit. A good 
annual dressing of some form of potash and phosphoric acid 
will make vigorous vines and plenty of fruit. 

As to spraying, while some have not found any benefit 
from it on fruit trees, there is no doubt that in most sections 
of the country it is an absolute necessity for sound grapes, 
and while it will not prevent blight on the pear, it does add 
greatly to the appearance of the fruit. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Apple. 

HAVING spent the last thirty years of my life on the im- 
mediate Giilf coast, my experience with apples is nec- 
essarily limited, and as a book on horticulture would 
not be complete without a notice of this best of all fruits, I 
append on that subject a most excellent article from the 
Southern States, by Prof. M. B. Hilliard, of the Louisiana Ex- 
periment Station. He is known as an authority on horticul- 
ture in the far South, and his suggestions are well worth the 
careful attention of all fruit growers. There is no doubt that 
the apple as a money maker has been very greatly overlooked 
in the southern states, even when grown from long-rooted 
trees, which in our hot climate tends greatly to dwarf them, 
by compelling them to take on a surface system of roots, in- 
stead of penetrating deeply, which they would do if their 
roots were closely pruned. That this is true is clearly shown 
by the two very large apple trees now growing near Hitch- 
cock, Galveston Co., on Mr. H. Perthuis' old place. Those 
trees were a great puzzle for several years, and induced me 
to plant two hundred apple trees at the same time I planted 
my pear orchard. While that variety is not suited to this 
locality, as far as productiveness is concerned (nor is it prob- 
able that any apple would pay on the Gulf coast), still those 
two trees clearly show that if planted right, the apple will 
make a large tree even here. Those two trees are now about 
twenty years old, and their history, as given by Mr. Perthuis, 
is as follows : 

During a visit to Houston he saw a thrifty young apple 
tree in the yard of a friend, and when about to return he cut 
off a shoot with the intention of grafting several quince trees 
on his place at Hitchcock. On reaching home he cut the 
shoot in half and stuck the two pieces into the ground for a 

(63) 



64 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

few days. Being busy, they remained there several weeks, 
and when he finally took them up for grafting, he was sur- 
prised to find little roots just starting from the lower ends. 
He at once set them out about twenty feet apart, where they 
took root, made a rapid growth, and long ago their branches 
met, the bodies near the ground being over one foot in diam- 
eter. While not very productive, owing to the variety not 
being adapted this far South, these trees have been models 
of health and vigor, though for many years they have stood 
in the sod. The two hundred trees I was induced to plant 
from the conduct of these two were set with very long roots, 
and after growing moderately well for several years, finally 
assumed such a dwarf habit, though given the best of culture 
and, being between rows of pear trees, that they were dug up 
and thrown out. I had then found out the value of root- 
pruning, and was not surprised to see perfectly fiat, lateral 
and surface root systems on them all, not one having struck a 
single tap-root. That is plainly the cause of the dwarf habit 
all apple trees assume in the far South, and it is possible that 
some of the southern winter varieties named in Prof. Hil- 
liard's excellent article may be adapted even here, if closely 
root-pruned when planted. This is one fruit, however, that 
should be planted in the valleys all over Texas and the South. 
It blooms late, is never caught by frost, and, like the pear, 
loves a moist location. It is hard to hurt an apple tree with 
water, and its general failure to do well in the far South is 
due, next to leaving long roots, more to planting on high, 
dry locations than anything else. In the valley near the 
Hannah Springs, at Lampasas, are a dozen or more thrifty 
apple trees, planted nobody knows just when, and being on 
the Springs property, were turned out on the common fifteen 
years ago. They have never failed a single crop during that 
time, as I was informed by a resident who had known of 
them that long, and when I saw them recently, every tree 
was overloaded, but looking fresh and green. The remark- 
able point about those trees was that not a sign of a worm or 
insect could be found upon either fruit or leaves. Unfortu- 
nately, while there are plainly six varieties, nobody knows 



THE APPLE. 65 

'what they are, as the fruit is never allowed to get more than 
half grown before it is carried off by the public. If the 
suitability of the valleys of the interior of Texas for apple 
culture is to be judged by the way those trees have done for 
many years, certainly the fruit-growers of our state are mak- 
ing a great mistake in neglecting to plant extensive orchards 
of this staple and most profitable of all fruits on some of the 
rich bottom lands now given entirely to corn and cotton. 

But whatever our southern brethren do, the fruit-growers 
of the apple states will make no mistake to begin now to set 
■close root-pruned apple trees. The orchards of the last de- 
cade or more have all been planted with large, long-rooted 
trees, and no amount of cultivation or care will prolong their 
usefulness over twelve or fifteen years. It takes but a few 
full crops to break down trees the bulk of whose roots are in 
the upper twelve inches of the soil, and the man who selects 
the best varieties now, root-prunes closely, plants in small 
holes, rams tight, cultivates well for a few years, and then 
puts down to Bermuda, blue grass, or other sod, and pastures 
or mows it, not forgetting to top-dress well around the trees 
each year with some good fertilizer, will, if his trees are prop- 
agated from productive, bearing ones, begin in four or five 
years to reap a rich harvest, and have an orchard that will 
long outlive him, and be the safest legacy he can leave his 
children. As to all the talk about the old, choice varieties of 
winter apples running out, it may be set down as talk and 
nothing else. They have been run out by the persistent 
persecution they have been subjected to, in the form of trees 
used, and the continual cutting of their roots with the plow, 
together with overbearing. There is not to-day an apple in 
the country that, if put upon a vigorous, healthy, close root- 
pruned stock, will not bear as fine fruit as it did the first 
crop it ever bore, provided its roots are let alone when the 
tree begins to bear. As bearing on this point I give the 
ioUowing letter: 



66 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

Caspiana, La., Dec. /j, igo^. 
H. M. Stringfellow. 

Dear Sir — Seeing your remarks in Farm and Ranch on your suc- 
cess with Terry Winter Apple in sod, leads me to inquire why we are 
now unable to grow winter apples here in the Red River Valley like 
we did years ago. We live at Caspiana, La., twenty miles below 
Shrevesport, and when we bought the plantation, just after the war, 
found two large apple trees growing near a small house on the bank 
of the river. They were different kinds, but both fine large apples, 
one very red, and never failed to bear full crops. The ground was 
never disturbed, and we had no trouble in keeping the fruit all through 
the winter and often took samples to the Shrevesport merchants, who 
said the^ were far superior, especially in quality, to any of the 
imported apples. Finally, at their suggestion, we sent Stark Bros, 
cuttings of both kinds, which we named Numbers i and 2, as nobody 
could identify them, with an order to propagate one hundred trees. 
They did so, and we planted them twenty feet apart, cultivated clean 
ever since, until now the branches are lapping ; but, though about 
fifteen years old and apparently perfectly healthy, we have never had 
a single ripe apple. The trees bloom every spring, set full of fruit, 
but all of it rots in midsummer and falls off. Shortly after sending 
the wood to Stark Bros, a big rise in the river caused the bank to 
cave, carrying away both of the old apple trees. Do you think clean 
cultivation is the cause of the fruit rotting? 

Yours truly, 

A. E. Hutchinson. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Pear. 

THE pear having now established itself as the leading 
fruit of the Gulf coast, except that portion devoted to 
the orange, and its general management having been 
so fully given in horticultural journals, as well as books, little 
remains to be said, except to mention the varieties best suited 
to the far South. And first, it may be remarked that the 
experience of the last few years has quite definitely settled 
the question as to the blight ever becoming a cause for alarm 
here, if orchards are allowed to take their natural rest during 
the winter. That bearing orchards should be neither plowed, 
fertilized nor pruned at that time is certain. There is 
scarcely a doubt that trees thus treated will remain perma- 
nently healthy if not allowed to greatly overbear. It is true 
that all the bearing orchards have been grown from more or 
less long-rooted trees, but the native vigor of the Chinese 
pears is so great, and the water level so near the surface, 
that the natural motion of the sap is likely always to be main- 
tained during the growing season. This is shown plainly 
from the fact that the leaves remain fresh and green on the 
trees until December. It is to this fact that this section owes 
its remarkable exemption from blight ; for if the trees are not 
stimulated during winter, the sap will remain dormant until 
the proper time for growth in spring. As to varieties for the 
Gulf coast region, it may be well to repeat that the experi- 
ence of thirty years has shown that none of the old standard 
American or European varieties can be depended on to pro- 
duce a paying crop anywhere in the far South. It is true 
that isolated trees here and there have given som.e pears, but 
only in small quantities ; nor are the trees sufficiently vigor- 
ous in our climate. The Le Conte, Garber and Kieffer, 
ripening in succession, are a perfect success everywhere. 

(67) 



68 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

The Smith's Hybrid is simply a poor Le Conte. It ripens at 
the same time, but rots more quickly at the core, and after 
fruiting several years, my trees were top-budded to Garber, 
which pear forms a perfect succession to the Le Conte, and 
is superior in quality to either it or the Kieffer. It resembles 
the latter closely in shape and size, but has the smooth skin 
of the Le Conte, and ripens well on or off the tree, never 
rotting at the core or suffering from the bitter-rot on the out- 
side, as the Kieffer often does. However, with all its good 
qualities, it has one most serious fault, and that is, its late- 
ness in coming into bearing. This is due, probably, to the 
fact that it has been grown so continuously from young trees 
that a full crop cannot now be expected on such trees for ten 
years or more. But it is of the greatest importance that this 
variety should be largely grown as a succession to Le Conte, 
when it becomes necessary to can or evaporate our crop. It 
ripens at a time that offers a better market for pears than any- 
period in the year, for the California, Bartlett and Le Conte 
are then gone, the " Kieffer still green, and the California 
varieties on the market are far inferior in quality to it. 
Fortunately, we now have a way to bring this variety into- 
early bearing — by budding it on Le Conte, Kieffer or 
young Garber, grown from cuttings. The great difficulty is 
to obtain wood from bearing trees. The Kieffer is so well 
known that comment is unnecessary, except to warn growers 
against allowing it to overbear. 

While in remarks elsewhere on the decadence of modern 
orchards no reference to the pear in the South was intended, 
there is no question that over cropping and non-fertilizing 
will quickly reduce the fruit to a very small size, and greatly 
weaken the tree. I omitted to allude to one other pear that 
is now growing in my former orchard at Hitchcock, which 
requires mention only as a warning of its utter worthlessness 
for any purpose. It has from time to time been put before 
the public as Early Harvest, Jefferson and Lawson-Comet, 
but is a fraud under any name. A fourteen-year-old tree that 
cost me two dollars has never borne more than a dozen pears 
at a time, and never bloomed until it was ten years old,. 



THE PEAR, 69 

though it is one of the most vigorous growers in the orchard, 
and now over thirty feet high. It is the earliest and most 
beautiful of all pears, ripening about the first of June, but it 
rots at the core in a day or so after being gathered, if near 
ripe, and in quality is about equal to sawdust. Referring 
again to the Garber, and budding from bearing trees, it 
would not be advisable to top-bud young two or three-year- 
old Le Conte trees in orchard, for the labor of keeping the 
Le Conte shoots rubbed off below would be very considerable 
for several years. It would be far better to bud within a foot 
of the ground, and turn the whole tree into that pear. 

Having discussed the growing of cuttings fully in a former 
chapter, it is only necessary to say here that it is practically 
impossible to grow this pear from cuttings except in the fall, 
when, if planted the last of September or early in October, 
in the open ground if sufficiently moist, or closely in a bed 
and kept watered, 90 per cent, of it, as well as Le Conte and 
Kieffer, will root. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Plum. 

UNTIL the introduction of the Japan varieties, the 
South, especially the lower portion, bordering on the 
Gulf of Mexico, has been altogether dependent upon 
the native or Chickasaw varieties for her plums. I began 
years ago to test the most prominent sorts, that are so de- 
servedly popular in the Middle and Northern States. While 
all are reasonably good growers here, they fail entirely in pro- 
ductiveness. Occasionally a few fine specimens will reward 
one's labor, but nothing more. Of the common sorts, the 
Wild Goose, if pollenized with some other kind near by, will 
produce good crops, and the Robinson, Indian Chief and 
Golden Beauty, a small late plum, are all good bearers also, 
though they fall far short of filling the bill as first-class mar- 
ket plums. The skin of all is very thin and tender, and they 
fall an easy prey to the vigorous attacks of the curculio, un- 
less well sprayed with Paris green and lime water, or the lat- 
ter alone, scented with a pint to the barrel of gas tar. But 
with the introduction of the Japan varieties, a new era has 
dawned upon plum culture in the Gulf States. Not only are 
the members of this class proving early bearers, and exceed- 
ingly productive as a rule, but their skin is thicker and, we 
hope, less liable to damage by the curculio. We may, there- 
fore, rest assured that at last we shall have, with moderate 
spraying, fine, large, handsome market plums, perfectly 
adapted to the South. But the all-important and as yet un- 
settled problem is, Which are the most valuable varieties? 
The pictures and descriptions of all fruits contained therein 
are so bewildering in their magnificence, and this class of 
plums particularly, that one instinctively wants them all. 
The first to flash across the sky of horticulture were the 
Abundance and Botan, between which, if there is any real 

(70) 



THE PLUM. 



71 



difference, I have never been able to see it, though there is 
now a plum called the True Sweet Botan, or Berckmans, that 
is somewhat different both in growth and bearing, and, like 
the Botan, a most excellent eating fruit. This plum equals 
any of the Japan race in quality, though the various catalogues 
are annually bringing out something that they claim is better. 
One enterprising nurseryman in Louisiana has a genuine rab- 
bit's foot for getting all sorts and colors, from snowy white 
to ebony black, fresh by telegraph from Japan, their flavors 
ranging through such a delicious chord of descriptive adjec- 
tives that one wonders that the very angels do not drop their 
harps and hie them back to earth. Let them alone ! The 
old Kelsey is undoubtedly a splendid fruit where it succeeds, 
but it is subject to rot in many places, though neither 
here or in Southwest Texas. It is enormously prolific there, 
and I saw it in perfection at Beeville, at which place, though 
plums and peaches have been grown for many years, I saw 
several very old and extensive orchards that were entirely 
exempt from curculio and worms. It is plain that this insect 
has no love for a dry, warm climate, as he also ignores West- 
ern Texas generally. But in point of production, good size, 
solidity and moderate earliness, the Burbank stands far ahead 
of all Japan plums, though the fruit has been greatly over- 
rated. The quality here is quite poor, unless left on the tree 
until perfectly mature, when it is passably good. The Ha- 
tankio, or Kerr, is also a good eating plum, but a large five- 
year-old tree at Hitchcock has borne no fruit, the blossoms 
dropping every year. The Ogon bore well last year, but the 
quality is very poor, as is that of the Satsuma, which, like 
the Hatankio, is practically barren. The Red June or Na- 
gate, being boomed this season, like the Willard was last, as 
the best of all the Japan plums, has failed to bear a plum on 
a large five-year-old tree at Hitchcock, for which I paid the 
Starks one dollar, nor has it even formed blossom buds. The 
Willard is equally worthless here, the trees actually not leaf- 
ing out until the first of May. The new Wickson comes 
highly recommended, and ought to be valuable, as it is Mr. 
Burbank's pride. 



72 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

However, while in the beginning of this chapter I ex- 
pressed great confidence in the final success of the Japan 
plums in the far South, I must admit that the present season 
of '96 has witnessed a failure throughout the coast country 
of Texas. This fact is puzzling many who have planted freely 
and others who desire to plant. There has been no frost at 
all to damage the blooms, and the Robinson, Wild Goose, 
Indian Chief and other Chickasaw varieties are all loaded 
down, yet the Japan plums in the same orchards have not 
only cast all or nearly all their fruit, on trees of all ages, from 
three to six years, but straggled along for more than a month 
in blooming, and to-day, the first of May, blooms are still 
opening. There is unquestionably a cause for this queer 
conduct, and after studying over it for a month, and with a 
full knowledge of the general failure of the Marianna as a 
stock for these plums elsewhere, I am of the opinion that 
this freak is largely due to a decided want of congeniality 
between the Japan race and the Marianna stock here also. 
While the Marianna has become immensely popular as a 
stock for other plums, both because of its vigorous growth 
and the fact of striking so readily from cuttings, and never 
suckering, and while it may yet, perhaps, be the best of all 
stocks at the North, there is indubitable evidence to prove 
that the Japan plums are very short-lived when worked upon 
it in Texas and the South, and that it will generally kill a 
peach at the end of the first and always the second year. 
Complaints on this score have been general for some time, 
and many nurserymen are abandoning its use altogether, pre- 
ferring to work the Japan plums entirely on the peach, which 
experience has shown to be particularly adapted to that race. 
I was at Hitchcock recently, and saw a six-year-old 
Burbank plum tree, one of the four oldest on my former 
place, which had recently died without the slightest visible 
cause. A careful examination, after being dug up, showed 
the roots to have been apparently healthy, with not the 
slightest sign of root tumor or rot, and its growth had been 
extraordinary, and yet it is now dead, and one of the others 
is plainly doomed. I saw the same results in 1895 at 



THE PLUM. 73 

Beeville, in Southwest Texas, and only last week in Beau- 
mont, on the east, where two orchards on Marianna, seven 
years old, had died the past summer. The same experience 
has been related by Mr. J. W. Steubenrauch, of Mexia, 
Texas, one of the most successful orchardists of North Texas, 
and also by several growers in Tyler, the greatest fruit center 
in the state, while similar reports come from Louisiana and 
east of the Mississippi. It may, therefore, be set down as 
proved beyond all doubt that this stock is unsuited and un- 
congenial to the Japan race of plums. In a recent letter, 
Mr. Luther Burbank tells me that it is also of doubtful value 
in California. Several nurserymen of East Texas are now 
propagating the Japan plums on the common wild plum of 
this state, the Prutius Atnericana, and claim, that it is well 
suited to them. I have had some experience with that plum, 
and so far it seems to dwarf whatever was put upon it even 
more than the Myrobalan. However, as there are a great 
number of different seedlings of this species, some differing 
considerably from others, they may have one better suited 
than mine. I have seen some seedlings in the woods near 
Beaumont that suckered badly, though others do not. As it 
has been only recently that experience has shown the want of 
congeniality of the Marianna and Japan plums, it is doubtful 
whether there are trees of the latter race more than five or 
six years old on the Americana stock, so it is entirely un- 
settled yet how they will ultimately succeed, and assertions 
of interested parties must be taken with great caution. 
Enough money has been fooled away on the oriental plums 
worked on Marianna to make people go very slow with this 
new stock. On firm, well-drained ground, fertilized and 
regularly mowed, but not plowed, I believe the peach is the 
best stock for the Japan plums, unless the Myrobalan is supe- 
rior. The latter is almost universally used in California and 
France, and is said to be especially adapted for stiff soil and 
damp ground, and is entirely successful as a stock in such 
locations in California. I have heard no objection to this 
stock, except that the Japan plums do not grow as fast on it 
as oh Marianna. This is no objection at all, if the trees live 



74 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

and are productive. In fact, a moderate growth is more 
likely to be a healthy one. 

But, after all, would not all these Japan plums be likely 
to succeed just as well on their own roots as on any other 
stock? There would be no difficulty in treating them thus 
by grafting on the Marianna plum, and then cutting away the 
stocks after the scions had taken root at the lower ends. 
Some of the Japan plums, particularly the Satsuma, will 
sometimes grow quite well from cuttings, and all would likely 
root if treated as described in the chapter on grafting. It is 
well worth trying, for naturally vigorous trees like these 
plums would do best on their own roots. But in the near 
future Mr. Luther Burbank promises us a far better stock 
than any we now have. He has crossed the Satsuma on other 
varieties, and thinks he has something that will fill the long 
desired want for a vigorous stock particularly adapted to the 
Japan varieties as well as all other plums. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The Peach. 

FOR some unexplained reason, the Persian strain of 
peaches, so successful elsewhere over the United States, 
is a total failure in lower South Texas, and especially 
along the coast. The trees grow well, but are all very back- 
ward in starting off in spring, and form but few fruit buds. 
I do not know of a single productive tree of any of these 
varieties in this whole section. A fine, large Elberta, on Mr. 
I. Aiken's grounds at Hitchcock, now six years old, has 
never borne over a dozen peaches at a crop, and has not that 
many on the tree the present season. However, though we 
may not grow the Persian varieties successfully, still we are 
not without kinds that will afford a succession, if not of extra 
large peaches, still most excellent ones in quality, and unsur- 
passed in productiveness and regularity of bearing. I allude 
to the Waldo, Angel, Imperial and Climax, of the Peen-to 
and Honey strains. Those are all freestones. The Triena is 
a red-fleshed cling, about the same size as the above, and the 
best clingstone of those strains. While the catalogues con- 
tain an additional list of a great number of these hybrids, 
they are all practically identical with the above or inferior to 
them, and ripen precisely at the same time. It is claimed 
that the Jewell is about a week earlier than Waldo, but 
proved no earlier with me, and has the bad fault of blooming 
several weeks ahead of the Waldo. The above are all of the 
Chinese Peen-to and Honey types. In addition to them, 
recent experiments have shown that several Chinese hybrids 
are also very productive in the Gulf region. The Chinese 
Free, Thurber and Family Favorite are the cream of this type, 
and will furnish the best and largest peaches yet found that 
bear well this far South. Though the season has been ex- 
ceedingly dry, these varieties were heavily loaded with large 

(75) 



76 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

fruit of most excellent flavor. There is, perhaps, no coun- 
try in the world where a peach crop can be counted on 
with more certainty than on the above varieties here. The 
warm Gulf breeze beats back the early fall northers, and our 
peach trees hold their leaves until late in fall ; in fact, often 
almost until Christmas. This causes them to rest late enough 
in spring, if not winter-pruned, to nearly always miss the 
killing late frosts, so fatal further up the country. It is true 
that the Waldo and Angel, which bloom first, sometimes get 
caught, but they have the remarkable faculty of holding back 
enough buds, with almost human sagacity, to furnish a full 
crop, even if the first blooms are killed. This peculiarity, 
with their good eating and shipping qualities and small pits, 
makes them not only very desirable for home use, but should 
make them profitable as a market crop when the interior 
peaches are killed. The so-called Spanish peaches, Gal- 
veston, Onderdonk, Carpenter, Florida Crawford, Countess 
Victoria, and others, are really nothing more than common 
seedlings of more than ordinary merit, but not profitable for 
any except a nearby market. They lack color, nor are all of 
that list good bearers here, and all are late. I omitted to say 
that the Dwarf Japan Blood has proved of no value, having 
been unproductive now for four years. 

As stated elsewhere, the peach must have dry feet and a 
firm soil, both top and bottom, for health and long life here. 
The,re is no place for a close root-pruned peach orchard like 
a rolling, well drained, virgin prairie sod, with close mowing 
during the growing season. But not for trees set with long 
roots. By imitating nature, and planting close root-pruned 
trees, practically seed, on ground like she selects, perhaps 
even the dread yellows will never appear, and peaches 
may be grown at the far North with good success, where now 
they either die of the above disease or winter-kill every year. 
The curculio ami common cotton-boll worm are the only 
serious enemies to the fruit here, and the best preventive I 
have ever tried is a thorough spraying with weak whitewash, 
with a little gas tar added to make it smell. This appeals to 
both sight and smell, and has given me sound fruit. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Apricots, Figs, Japan Persimmons, and Nuts. 

EXPERIENCE in South Texas with several Florida varie- 
ties and a large number of the old standard kinds has, 
up to the present time, failed to develop a single pro- 
ductive apricot. They all grow well and bloom profusely, 
but fail to set their fruit. Recent experiments, however, 
with the old Royal, at Arcadia, lead to the hope that it may 
bear, for it set some fruit the present season, which unfortu- 
nately a severe wind thrashed off. 

Figs. — This popular fruit should be in every man's yard 
in abundance, both for himself and for his poultry, and, 
being exceedingly surface-rooted naturally, should always be 
grown from a cutting or very close root-pruned tree. But, 
except for very nearby markets, it is almost useless to grow 
figs in quantity. A large preserving establishment was 
started in New Orleans a few years ago, and a very consider- 
able quantity of the fruit put up, but experience soon showed 
that the preserves were of such an exceedingly sweet and 
cloying quality that very few could be eaten at once, and the 
demand has been very small. The plant suspended opera- 
tions a year ago, and is now idle. The fig thrives far better 
in a firm, packed, undisturbed soil, like a back or chicken 
yard, than when plowed and cultivated. The little Celeste or 
Sugar is much the most hardy and popular kind, and if 
trained up as a standard will make a very large and hand- 
some shade tree. 

Japan Persimmons. — A few years ago it was impossible to 
sell the fruit of this tree, or even give it away. Dr. Pearle, 
of Houston, planted quite an orchard twelve or fifteen years 
ago, and when the trees came into bearing, I happened to visit 
the place in the fall, and found a large lot of the fruit on 
hand, for which there was positively no demand. Since then, 

(77) 



78 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

however, the public taste has been gradually educated up to 
a moderate demand, and possibly in a few years they will be 
very popular. Some varieties are much more hardy than 
others. I had one sent to me under the name of Hyakume 
that was killed by a freeze at Hitchcock, while another longer 
and more pointed kind has never been hurt. I know trees of 
this variety in Beaumont that have borne enormously for 
fifteen years, though I do not know the name. Experience 
has shown that all persimmon trees, as well as pecans, are 
peculiarly adapted to close root-pruning, and make enormous, 
deep, strong roots the first year. If set in early winter and 
well tramped, both will grow freely, even from the tops of 
trees cut just at or even a little above where the first or 
upper roots of the seedling are emitted, and will make an 
astonishing growth the first season. For propagating both 
persimmons and pecans on large trees, winter budding, as 
described elsewhere, will be found to be particularly adapted, 
and much easier and more certain than grafting. 

Nuts.- — For Texas the pecan, of course, ranks first in im- 
portance, and doubtless the exaggerated estimates of the 
value of a pecan grove as a source of profit have led quite a 
number of persons to embark in this business, who will be 
disappointed. While this fine nut generally finds a market 
at some price, still the vast number of wild bearing trees, the 
crops of which are free and gathered by cheap labor, at a 
time when little else can be done, will always depress prices. 
In some seasons, like the last, values have been so low in 
many localities, that thousands of pounds have been left for 
the hogs to eat or to rot on the ground. The common seed- 
ling pecan cannot possibly pay as an investment, for even 
from the best seed inferior and male or unproductive kinds 
spring. But those who will plant the nuts on firm ground, 
and then, when two years old, graft, or better still, winter- 
bud, as described elsewhere, using wood or buds from full 
bearing trees of the largest thin-shelled varieties, will very 
likely find a good market for a long time. As to enemies, the 
frost occasionally blights the blossoms, and the tent caterpil- 
lar very frequently strips the leaves from the trees. But, of 



APRICOTS, FIGS, JAPAN PERSIMMONS AND NUTS. 79 

course, the enterprising grower could easily combat the latter 
by spraying. 

The English walnut is another nut that ought to succeed 
here, but we have no trees, as yet, over five years old, and 
they have borne nothing so far. The chief enemy of this nut 
is the flat-headed cottonwood borer, but a good coat of white- 
wash on the trunks every winter will entirely deter the moth 
from laying her eggs on this and all other trees. Of course, 
only nuts or close root-pruned trees should be planted, and 
on firm ground. The Japan walnut, however, is a very early 
bearer, even from the nut, and in five years will make quite a 
large tree, and bear full crops. The nuts seem to reproduce 
quite true, and this tree also has been proved to take most 
kindly to root-pruning. It is almost entirely free from all 
insect pests, will likely attain a very large size ultimately, 
and make a most ornamental shade tree. But the nuts, being 
small and hard shelled, will have little or no market value. 

The Japan chestnut has so far failed to set its fruit when 
grown from the seed. It is a very vigorous tree, but drops 
its blossoms every year here. The almond has not had the 
attention it deserves in Texas, but full experiments are being 
made, though its value is very doubtful anywhere in the 
state, as it blooms very early. The hickory nut and black 
walnut would not pay for the nuts, but the man who will 
plant a walnut grove from seed, on firm virgin soil, like the 
squirrels do, if he has the ground to spare, will, in the end, 
have a most profitable investment anywhere. But "culti- 
vate" all nut trees when old enongh to bear with a mowing 
machine, for every farmer knows that as soon as pecan tree.«? 
are enclosed in cultivated fields and plowed, they cease to 
bear. They bloom freely, but the destruction of their surface 
roots causes them nearly always to shed. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The Strawberry and Other Berries. 

THIS is by far the most profitable early spring crop for 
the lower Gulf States, and especially the coast country 
of Texas, where conditions of climate and transporta- 
tion are so favorable, and where, unlike sections farther 
North, a full crop can be grown the following season from 
summer or fall planting. In choosing a location for straw- 
berries, always select the stiffest and strongest soil, the black, 
"waxy and yellow clay land being ideal ground for this crop. 
Actual experience has shown, that this is one of the few 
plants that will do as well or even better here, manured in 
the drill, as presently described. Its natural tendency is to 
form surface roots, and they should by all means be drawn or 
tempted to go down. Broadcast fertilizing mixes the manure 
both at the top and bottom and, though it may look unreason- 
able, burying the manure in the drill under the plants will 
always make the largest fruit. So, instead of scattering the 
manure, whatever it may be, broadcast, first break the whole 
ground as deeply as possible, and harrow thoroughly until 
well pulverized, after which open furrows about two and one- 
half or three feet apart by running the plow each way. 
Along in this strew the fertilizer, and be sure to put enough. 
About half as much will do on the heavy black land, though 
it is hard to err in putting on plenty everywhere. If barn- 
yard manure is used, and there is no better if enough can be 
had, fill the bottoms of the furrows several inches deep. 
Then run a bull tongue up and down, thoroughly stirring and 
mixing it all. Next, throw the earth back on the furrows 
from each side by splitting out the middles, quite deep. Do 
not be afraid to leave the ridges well up. After smoothing 
off the tops to about a foot wide with a rake, cover the whole 
surface, ridges and furrows, quite deeply and evenly with hay 

(80) 



THE STRAWBERRY AND OTHER BERRIES. 8l 

or Straw, strewing it directly from the wagon, which can be 
run down between the rows. Spread the mulch thick enough 
to be at least two or three inches deep after settling. Do this 
in July or August, so as to catch the summer rains and have 
moist ground for planting in September and October. I ha^e 
the present season made careful notes, in many fields, of re- 
sults from different dates of planting, and find without excep- 
tion, that plants set in those two months not only grow by 
February quite as large as the two-year-old ones, but produce 
just as many and larger berries. The difference in size of 
fruit from the two ages alongside was in every instance very 
remarkable in favor of the fall-set plants. The great trouble 
is that frequently in the fall the weather is so hot and dry 
that it is very difficult to make plants live when set. This 
comes entirely from a too high temperature of the soil, which 
is entirely obviated by mulching as directed. Thousands of 
plants are annually sacrificed in August and September, from 
ignorance that unless set with a ball of earth at that time, the 
earth if clean, is too hot for the plants to take root. But if 
mulched in July or August, and a good rain falls to wet the 
earth well, it will remain cool and moist the whole fall. 

When ready to set, cut all roots back to about one inch, 
open a small hole in the mulch and insert the roots, fan- 
shape, straight down at least fifteen inches apart. Never 
spread Old the roots of any tree or plant, as this induces a super- 
ficial system. After setting, pull the straw or hay lightly over 
the plant, as a shade, and go on to the next. Treated thus, 
and allowed to grow right up through the mulch, a stand can 
always be secured with good, strong plants, a month or more 
in advance of those who undertake to plant on clean, unpro- 
tected ground. Another great advantage of this method is, 
that if the mulch has been put on evenly and of moderate 
thickness, no further work will be required until the crop is 
gone except, perhaps, the pulling up of a few stray weeds 
that force themselves up through the mulch in spring. But, 
even if this fall mulching be not practiced, no one should 
ever neglect this vitally important operation at some time 
before the fruit ripens. Sandy, dirty berries are now the 



82 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

rule, and not the exception, at several points, which has re- 
sulted in giving this season's crop a depreciated value of 
from 25 to 50 per cent, lower than it would have brought had 
mulching been general. It is hard to understand why other- 
wise enterprising growers will persist, from year to year, in 
flooding the markets with such fruit. They not only hurt 
themselves, but also all other growers who do mulch, for 
when prices come down for sandy fruit, the clean has to suf- 
fer likewise. The matted-row system is another mistake of 
many growers, and is responsible for this, as it is really im- 
possible to properly mulch plants thus grown. That system 
is admirably adapted to the North, where the entire tops of 
the plants are winter-killed, and when growth starts in spring 
the blooms come early, before the foliage grows too large, so 
as to shade the fruit too much, as it will here. Strawberries 
grown in the shade will not ship well, being not only soft, but 
of inferior quality. The sun should be able to strike all 
around every plant, and the berries will then be firm and 
bright. On no crop can be seen more plainly the effect of 
liberal and judicious fertilizing than on this. Heavy applica- 
tions of cotton-seed meal, or any fertilizer rich in ammonia 
alone, will always produce a rank growth of vine, susceptible 
to the "rust," and soft, insipid fruit. Plenty of potash, 
and especially phosphoric acid, are absolute necessities for 
firm, high-colored, well-flavored berries. For those who in- 
tend to make this a business, it is a matter of the first im- 
portance to provide a full supply of new plants every year, 
and a bed of sufficient size, rich and convenient to water, 
should be set with plants about three feet apart, in February 
or March, for runners. If shaded somewhat by a light frame 
and brush after June, very little or no water at all will be re- 
quired until August, when it should be supplied, if dry, to 
compel the plants to throw out new and strong roots, for re- 
planting in September and October. 

As to marketing, nothing need be said, except that many 
growers will persist every year in shipping half-ripe fruit, to 
the great depreciation of their crop later on. Prices have 
now come down to 'hard-pan, the public is ^'■earl}'^ growing 



THE STRAWBERRY AND OTHER BERRIES. 83 

more critical in its demand for quality in all fruits, and it is 
the height of folly for berry growers, when the season is cool 
and there is no danger of the fruit spoiling, to try to force 
half-ripe, pale and sandy berries on the market. I kept close 
watch on the reports from the large cities this season, and 
saw repeated complaints on this subject. The Florida 
growers do not do it, and their fruit has steadily maintained 
a good price in New York, and has been invariably quoted in 
St, Louis and Chicago, the present season, at more than 
double the price of Texas berries. The strawberry in the 
South is subject to but one disease — the "rust," already al- 
luded to — a bacterial one, due to conditions of extreme and 
sudden variations of temperature and moisture. While the 
Michel has been most seriously affected by this disease every- 
where the present season, the old reliable Nunan has not 
shown a sign of it, though grown amongst and alongside, and 
its plants have averaged double the size of the Michel. As 
to varieties, the latter should be entirely discarded for out- 
side planting, though, as shown farther on, it can be grown 
with great profit under cover. A very careful examination of 
many strawberry fields by Mr. E. W. Kirkpatrick, an old 
berry grower o£ North Texas, during the season of '96, con- 
vinced him that the Nunan and Cloud Seedling are by far 
the best varieties for South Texas. The latter is a pistillate, 
and requires every third row to be planted with Nunan 
which has a perfect flower. The Smeltzer is also an excel- 
lent shipping variety, but the fruit is inferior to the Nunan 
in quality and color. 

And now, I would urge all growers to make an experiment 
with the Michel, on a small scale, at least, under plank and 
oiled cloth covering. While this is an extra-large, early, and 
really good eating berry, when the weather becomes warm 
and dry it is not a long-distance shipper, and has the very 
serious fault, for open air culture, of beginning to fruit in the 
fall and early winter. Ordinarily those crops are ruined by a 
freeze, and the plants have had their work for nothing, be- 
sides being damaged by the checking of their sap when in 
motion, which is probably the prime cause for the general 



84 



THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



epidemic of rust on them this spring. It will be remembered 
that we had earl}^ and repeated frosts and light ice, several 
times last fall, a very unusual thing at that season, and the 
Michel plants were in full growth. The question is, Can we 
not utilize this quality of early fall and winter bearing ? I 
would suggest, on a high location, that a bed about eight feet 
wide be thrown up well with a plow, after being thoroughly 




STRAWBERRY BED, UNCOVKRED. 

fertilized. On top of this place an ordinary coldframe five 
feet wide, made of ixio or 12-inch plank for sides, con- 
nected by strips about two feet apart, cut rounding, as shown 
in the illustration, to support the oiled cloth and shed the 
rain. After stretching common white cotton cloth of a good 
grade, to make it last it should be thoroughly oiled with a 




STRAWBERRY BED, COVERED. 



paint brush, or the cloth might be dipped in the linseed oil 
and wrung out, and then stretched to dry on the bed. I 
have used such a covering for tomatoes, and found it will 
protect from a freeze much better than the ordinary frost- 
proof cloth sold, or even than glass sash. Of course, the 
main point is to keep out a freeze. We have an ordinary 
temperature warm enough in winter to perfectly mature 



THE STRAWBERRY AND OTHER BERRIES. 85 

berries in the open air, but one, or at most two, cold spells 
every year spoil the crop. No other variety will fruit early 
and out of season, like the Michel, which makes it an ideal 
plant for this purpose. I know of no crop that will pay like 
it, if treated as suggested, and I predict that in a few years 
every enterprising grower will have one or more beds thus 
treated, for success then is absolutely certain and good prices 
assured. A crop thus grown must of necessity be limited, 
and with two markets like Houston and Galveston at hand, 
an over-production of fine, ripe fruit would be impossible. 
But the balance of the state would be ready to take any sur- 
plus. Berries like the Michel, grown on rich ground and 
with plenty of room, and protection from cold and beating 
rains, would color up handsomely, and always bring a fine 
price. The people who buy at that season have the money, 
and will pay well for a first-class article. Of course, a con- 
tingency of dry weather must be provided against for best 
results, and if unable to afford a small windmill, a good hand 
force-pump, with ordinary well, will furnish abundant water. 
Our wells are always full in winter. It would be well to 
water entirely from below, to prevent wetting the fruit. 

When preparing the bed, lay a row of common one-inch 
drain tiles, one foot long, the full length of it and about eight 
inches beneath the surface. Cover the tiles with an inch of 
shell, gravel, sawdust or hay, in order to keep the soil from 
finding its way between the joints and into the tiles. Or, in- 
stead of tiles, two pieces of i x 3 heart pine, nailed together 
like a gutter, and the edges notched at intervals of six inches, 
to allow a free escape of the water. This should be inverted, 
and laid upon a six-inch plank, at the depth named, and the 
end next the well, whether tiles or plank, connected by hose 
to the pump. The fruit when ripe need never be wet, which 
would greatly improve its appearance and shipping qualities. 
The plants should be set not less than fifteen inches apart 
each way, and the bed evenly mulched before putting them 
out. A strawberry bed of Michel thus treated would be ab- 
solutely sure for a paying crop, and the yield from November 
to March alone would be something wonderful. The cover- 



86 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

ing (see cut, page 84), which, by the way, should be nailed 
fast on one side, and the other tacked to long one-inch cur- 
tain-rods, and fixed so as to lap and roll back in all ordinary 
weather, could be removed the last of March and packed 
away for the next season, and the plank likewise, and both 
would answer for a long time. 

If northern growers can afford expensive houses, and 
steam heating to grow cucumbers, lettuce, etc., by the acre, 
surely it will pay to spend the small amount of money re- 
quired here to grow a much more valuable product like the 
strawberry, and put it on the market during the winter 
months. 

Blackberries. — Like the strawberry, the dewberry and 
blackberry are perfectly at home around the Gulf coasts, and 
in fact all over the South, though many varieties of the latter 
are so subject to rust that it pays best to confine ourselves 
entirely to varieties like the Dallas. The Mayes or Austin 
Hybrid dewberry and Early Trinity blackberry are new and 
very promising varieties, that are well worthy of a trial. As 
these berries are all rank growers, and sucker very badly in 
our long, warm summers, it is all-important to give plenty of 
room between the rows, to permit the free use of the plow. 
Eight feet between the rows is none too much. As soou as 
the fruit is gone, the old canes should be cut out at once, or 
by winter they will become so tangled with the new growth 
that their removal is very difficult and troublesome. A good 
dressing of bone meal or phosphate will greatly improve the 
size of the berries. 

The raspberry, gooseberry and currant find the far South 
too warm for their perfect development, and these fruits are 
of no value there, though some of the black-cap raspberries 
are cultivated to a limited extent in the upper portions of 
Texas. 

I omitted to note above that the strawberr}' beds should 
run north and south, to allow all the plants to have at least 
half a day of sun. 



CHAPTER XX. 

A Review. 

THE preceding chapters are part of the original New 
Horticulture, published twelve years ago by myself, 
because no publisher would bring out what one of them, 
after looking over the manuscript, called "a mess of non- 
sense." When I penned them 1 little thought I should live 
to see even the faintest streak of dawn that would usher 
in the happy "Emancipation" day for the fruit-growers 
of the world. Instead of the easy, delightful and profitable 
occupation that horticulture should be, when followed in 
accordance with nature's laws, it has now become, through 
a strange, unaccountable perversion of those laws, appar- 
ently from its very beginning, so burdened with fallacious 
theories and costly methods, that to be a horticulturist, 
according to the present accepted orthodox teachings, is 
to be merely a "hewer of wood and drawer of water" for 
the railroads, the middlemen, the box factories and the 
day-laborers. Realizing that all this was coming through 
the enormous plantings of fruit trees by the cheap and 
easy method of root-pruning, and seeing that the princi- 
ples of the New Horticulture, the fruit-grower's only salva- 
tion, were making slow headway through the determined 
opposition of nearly all the experiment stations, professors 
and many of the largest fruit-growers of the country, about 
six years ago I moved to Lampasas, to institute crucial ex- 
periments in sod culture. Up to that time root-pruning and 
other of its principles were being rapidly adopted by pro- 
gressive fruit men, but the one horticultural pill that gagged 
even them was non-cultivation. Knowing that this was the 
most important principle of them all, I determined to so 
sugar-coat it by the exhibition of perfect fruit thus grown as 
to induce them to swallow it also, and at the same time 

(S7) 



00 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

crush the opposition of the so-called horticultural scientists 
by three experimental demonstrations on a scale large enough 
to convince the most skeptical who were honestly looking for 
the truth. Of course, I knew that there were thousands so 
joined to their idol of cultivation that they would not be con- 
vinced, even though Charles Downing himself should rise 
from the dead and denounce it. With this view I set out an 
orchard here, and then cast about for my northern experi- 
ment station and a man to conduct it fairly. I wanted to 
enlist some journal, and finally selected the editor of The 
Rural New Yorker; and in order to interest him by the novelty 
of the thing, and indemnify him if the venture proved a 
failure, I offered to give him outright the plates and copy- 
right of the New Horticulture and one thousand copies of the 
book, on condition that he set out one thousand fruit trees 
in crowbar holes, on his poorest unbroken land, mulching 
and fertilizing around each tree and mowing the ground in- 
stead of cultivating it. He accepted the offer, though utterly 
incredulous of success, for, when he received a model tree, he 
wanted to know if I "really expected a straight stick like 
that to grow." But he faithfully did his part, giving occa- 
sional reports in the paper on the successful behavior of the 
little "sticks." At this, certain of the horticultural scribes 
and Pharisees began to hint that he had "an axe to grind" 
in the sale of the books ; so he promptly turned them and the 
New Horticulture over to The Rural New Yorker. After they 
were sold, that journal decided not to publish another edi- 
tion and returned the plates, etc., to me. Finding from con- 
tinued inquiries that there is a growing interest in the New 
Horticulture, and feeling, like The Rural New Yorker editor, 
that any future articles I may write would look as if I also 
"had an axe to grind," I offered Farm and Ranch the sole use 
of the plates free, so long as they keep the book in print. They 
accepted my offer in the interest of progress, but, never hav- 
ing experimented, leave it to stand strictly on its merits. 

With this explanation, I will now return to the New York 
experimental orchard, planted largely in apples and peaches, 
which has been such a signal success and excited such general 



A REVIEW. 89 

interest at the North, that a few weeks ago Mr. E. Van 
Alstyne, a prominent fruit-grower and writer, visited it and 
made a highly favorable report in The Rural New Yorker of 
January 15, concluding with the following language: "The 
annual growth of new wood was all that one could wish, and 
it is good, solid wood, too. The trees are strong and healthy 
and will compare favorably with the majority of trees of the 
same age anywhere. I see no reason why in the next eight 
or ten years this orchard should not return an annual net 
income that will equal several times the cost of land and 
trees." In the same issue the editor remarks: " Those were 
June-bred trees, planted in crowbar holes and cut back so 
that about one foot of stem was left above ground. The 
roots were pruned so that not even a stub of a side root was 
left. We punched a hole with a crowbar right in a brush- 
grown field where no plowing had been done for at least thirty 
years. The little trees were put down into the holes and water 
and sand poured in, then packed down hard around the root 
with a stick. These trees did not receive the attention they 
should have had, and they grew slowly at first. I have dug 
up quite a number of them to see what they were doing, and 
in every case their first effort seems to be a series of tap-roots 
which dig straight down into the ground. I have traced 
them until I feel sure they reached nearly or quite to the 
water level. Later, after the tap-roots are well fixed, the 
small feeding-roots come out from below the crown of the 
tree, when growth proceeds rapidly." 

In a former issue of the journal the editor had this to say 
about cultivation : " I have been criticised more or less for 
trying what is called the Stringfellow method of handling 
trees, — that is, close root-pruning, planting in small holes, 
mulching around the trees and mowing the grass instead of 
cultivation. Many prominent men warned me in the begin- 
ning against these methods, but if I were now to publish 
their letters it would make those gentlemen very weary. In 
view of the way my own trees have acted, I am unable to 
understand just why the scientific men make such fun of 
these methods. The fact is, those gentlemen will soon not 



go THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

only find it necessary to take a back seat, especially on the 
subject of cultivation, but will actually have to stand up." 
So much for the New York experiment. About the same 
time it was started, Mr. W. W. Durham, of Austin, Texas, 
agreed also to plant one thousand fruit trees under my direc- 
tion as a test of the New Horticulture in the South. The 
conditions were identical with the former, being unbroken 
natural sod, crowbar holes and close root-pruned trees, mulch- 
ing each one, and mowing the middles several times during 
the growing season. The orchard is now five years old, and 
last August Mr. Durham wrote me as follows: "My sod 
fruit is now all gone except a few September peaches. The 
Elberta, Family Favorite, Sylphide, Bequett, Carman and 
several others were the largest and highest colored by far 
that came to the Austin market. A German friend, who has 
grown peaches all his life, said he never saw Family Favorite 
have such color before. The Driscoll Hotel let my peaches 
turn down all the east Texas fruit, on account of fine size, 
beautiful color and good flavor. There is an orchard just 
across the Colorado River that has eight hundred trees in it, 
and Mr. Weaver, the owner, told me they did not bear a 
single peach this season, due to the late February freeze. 
That orchard was thoroughly cultivated from early spring." 
Here we have absolute proof that the destruction of the 
fibrous surface-roots so weakened the eight hundred trees 
that they shed all their blossoms ; to which cause is also due 
the well-known "June drop" of cultivated peach trees all 
over the country, for who ever heard of "June drop " from a 
fence corner or a back-yard tree ? 

I will now close my demonstrative proof of the superiority 
of non-cultivation, with a few words on my own sod orchard, 
planted at the same time, in the same way, and treated just 
as were the New York and Austin experiments ; except that 
my trees were set in small, clean circles on Bermuda grass 
sod, which has been kept well mowed ever since. From 
these trees I shipped fruit to the World's Fair which the 
superintendent of Texas exhibits, Mr. Samuel Dixon, and 
Mr. E. W. Kirkpatrick, President of the National Associa- 



A REVIEW. gi 

tion of Nurserymen, pronounced to be the most beautiful 
they ever saw. Such being the general good results of non- 
cultivation, before inviting attention to some of the evil 
effects of cultivation, no matter how shallow, which neces- 
sarily destroys the surface-roots of trees, let us consider for 
a few moments some of the peculiarities of those fine, hair- 
like little feeding-roots that trees of all kinds, fruit and for- 
est, instinctively push to the top of the ground, taking com- 
plete possession if allowed, but of which neither fruit- growers 
nor horticultural writers take the slightest notice. Cut and 
slash them with the plow, cultivator or hoe as we may, back 
again they come, if given only a few weeks' chance, to the 
surface. Nature's kitchen, where she kindly spreads, cooked 
by the action of the elements, her choicest food for the mil- 
lions of hungry little mouths so eager to partake of it. Alas ! 
the well-meaning but mistaken fruit-grower, under the delu- 
sion that he is thus benefiting his trees, comes along at 
short intervals with his infernal machines of tree torture, 
tears the whole surface to pieces, scattering the soluble food 
for the next flooding rain to carry away to the greedy rivers 
and sea, while the patient, long-suffering trees at once go to 
work to replace the poor little innocents that man has so 
ruthlessly destroyed. 

And here let me quote an extract from the Houston 
Chronicle of today, February 8, which so well expresses my 
own belief for years : " Dr. Henry C. Conrad, of the Botani- 
cal Division of Johns Hopkins University, after continued 
experiments, is convinced that in some form or other plants 
and trees have all the senses of animals except hearing. ' We 
have never been able,' said Dr. Conrad, 'to discover any 
way in which they are susceptible to sound, but in seeing, 
feeling and tasting they are certainly developed. The Sun- 
dew, a plant which grows in the swamps about Baltimore, 
probably knows the sense of taste to a greater extent than 
any other. With a single exception,' said Dr. Conrad, 
'they can recognize light and the direction from which it 
comes ; they feel the slightest wound, they discriminate in 
taste, they have a sense of direction, whether they are 



92 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

turned in the right direction or not, and are influenced by 
electric currents passing near them.' " 

Who shall say that this is not all true, or deny that trees 
are endowed by nature with some kind of conscious intelli- 
gence and feeling ? Their actions plainly show it. The 
modest, little "sensitive" plant shrinks at the touch of man ; 
all kinds of vines, instinctively, as if they saw, grow toward 
and stretch their tendrils to grasp a foreign support; while 
in the crowded woods tree-tops keep away from and leave 
room for each other with a kindly consideration that puts to 
shame the selfishness of man. Is it incredible that the great 
Entity we call God, the "unknown God," who "is in all, over 
all and through all," of whom all nature and the universe is 
the visible expression, has also endowed the trees, plants 
and flowers with some sort of capacity for pain and pleasure ; 
and that, if our dull eyes and ears could but be opened to the 
mysteries of tree life, we should see their expressions of de- 
light over the opening blooms and flowers with which they 
decorate themselves in spring, and the golden fruit in sum- 
mer, and hear their cries of pain under the torture of the 
pruning-knife, the cultivator and the plow? One cannot look 
upon the dead and dying fruit trees that abound in all our 
orchards, stretching out to heaven their poor, blackened 
limbs and yellow, withering leaves in silent protest against 
man's inhumanity to trees, without feeling that they have 
really and truly suffered during the long years of such treat- 
ment. But a better day is dawning for so-called inanimate 
nature, and, with a view to hasten it, I will next point out 
some of the evil effects of cultivation which have forced them- 
selves under my observation, since the preceding chapter on 
that subject was written, twelve years ago. But, before doing 
so, I wish to state that the three sod experiments alluded to 
were made intentionally under the most trying conditions, 
and also to show that thousands of acres of New England 
"abandoned farms," and hilly as well as rocky locations else- 
where, in sections of average rainfall, could be profitably set to 
fruit trees, especially apples; though, of course, growth would 
not be so rapid as if they were cultivated a few years, until 
the trees began to bear, and then put down to a mowed sod. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Effects oj Cultivation. 

WHILE for years I have known in a general way that 
sod fruit would keep longer than cultivated, I was 
greatly surprised, during my World's Fair shipments, 
at a remark in one of Mr. Sam Dixon's letters, that, "while 
all other fruit rots quickly, yours looks like it would keep for- 
ever." Knowing that all of it was full ripe, I was much puz- 
zled, and fell to wondering why my peaches kept longer than 
others, aad could see no possible reason except that they 
had been grown naturally, upon trees whose feeding roots 
had never been disturbed, thus enabling them to so perfect 
their fruit, combining its sugar, acid and color in one har- 
monious whole, as to form a peach immune to rot. So, last 
summer I determined to test this theory, so big with possi- 
bilities for the fruit-grower, if true, and on the 15th of last 
July, the first day of that awfully hot wave that swept over the 
country, I shipped by express two baskets of Elberta peaches 
to Mr. Williams, of the Practical Fruit Grower, Springfield, 
Mo. ; two to Mr. Olcott, of Atnerican Fruits, Rochester, 
N. Y. ; two to the Pacific Fruit World, Los Angeles, Cal., and 
one to Mr. J. Horace McFarland, of Harrisburg, Pa., — re- 
questing all of them except Mr. McFarland to return one 
basket at once to me at Lampasas. The peaches all went in 
perfect condition and were pronounced "firm, juicy and deli- 
cious," "just as fine as if picked fresh from the tree," Mr. 
Poland, of the Pacific Fruit World, declaring "they were 
magnificent, fit for an epicure." The other three baskets 
were returned without opening, the one from California by 
some delay, having taken sixteen days to make the round 
trip, but all the peaches were still perfectly sound. 

Not satisfied with that performance, I closed each basket 
on arrival and forwarded it to Farm and Ranch, Dallas, Tex., 

(93) 



94 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

two hundred and fifty miles distant, where they opened up 
still in good order. All those peaches were grown on sod 
trees, and if my theory, as to that being the cause of their 
wonderful carrying qualities, is not true, then Lampasas is 
the most remarkable peach country in the world. But I know 
it is true, for our season was very wet and cultivated fruit 
rotted just as badly here as elsewhere. But while my peaches 
were making these remarkable trips by express in the hottest 
weather, cultivated fruit from East Texas and Georgia was 
going forward in refrigerator cars and arriving at all markets 
in such bad condition that little of it brought the charges. 
An associated press dispatch from New York, July i6, read 
as follows: "Georgia peaches in heavy receipt. The fruit 
develops the brown rot very quickly. Lots of green stuff also 
coming, all covered with rot." Much of that fruit was doubt- 
less from the cultivated orchards of J. H. Hale, in which 
Mr. J. Horace McFarland was interested, and, if he is my pub- 
lisher, I must tell a joke on him. The name of the peaches 
I sent in his basket was not mentioned, so later I got the fol- 
lowing letter from him: "The peaches, perfect beauties, 
came today. We ate the ripest and put the others in a cool 
room. This peach is certainly very beautiful and seems to be 
of the Elberta shape and color, but with much more refined 
flavor. The flesh is thick, pit small, and it and the flesh part 
readily. Mrs. McFarland remarked at once that it would be 
a pleasure to can such peaches. What's the name of this 
peach, please ? " 

But I do not blame him for not recognizing it as a true 
Elberta, since he had been accustomed only to the shoddy 
article. The fact that the skin readily parts from a sod- 
grown Elberta is applicable to all sod-grown peaches, and if 
dipped a few seconds in boiling water, the skin will slip as 
readily as that of a tomato. But it will not part from a culti- 
vated peach. Delighted now, and amazed at my success and 
its far-reaching consequences, foreshadowing complete 
emancipation of the fruit-grower from the grinding refrigera- 
tor-car monopoly, and lessening the cost of production so 
greatly as to solve forever the problem of profitable market- 



EFFECTS OF CULTIVATION. 95 

ing of all fruit crops, yet at the same time fearing that pos- 
sibly climatic conditions here may have had something to do 
with it, I determined to see whether California, with a still 
drier climate, could parallel the achievement of my sod 
peaches with her cultivated ones under a temperature of ioo°. 

With this in view, I requested our local fruit-dealer to 
buy one or two crates of California peaches from Houston, 
ordering that they be sent direct from the refrigerator car on 
its arrival there. Accordingly, on August 15, a few days after 
the return of my Los Angeles basket, the two crates arrived, 
having been taken from the iced car at 7 p. m. , and delivered to 
the Express Company in Houston at once, reaching here the 
next morning. Being notified, I went down and saw the 
crates opened, in one of which were five sound peaches, and 
seven in the other, the balance all more or less rotten in a 
single night. The peaches were large yellow clings, but so 
bitter from being picked too green that they were not fit to 
eat. I at once sent Farm and Ranch one rotten and one sound 
one, who will testify to their condition. Here, then, was the 
proof that climatic conditions had nothing to do with the 
shipping qualities of my peaches, which went to Los Angeles 
and back by express in good order, while California, with 
a still drier climate, could not under our high temperature 
get her cultivated ones here sound, even in a refrigerator 
car with no handling, to say nothing of a return trip. Now, 
what was the reason ? Plainly, as I said before, either 
Lampasas is the best peach country in the world, or else 
cultural conditions did it. 

But, to demonstate still further that sod fruit is immune 
to rot, I smeared rotten peaches from a neighbor's tree all 
over many of mine — -green, half-ripe and full ripe — and in not 
a single case did the disease "take ;" the rotten mass simply 
drying up, leaving my fruit as sound as before. Still not 
satisfied, I inoculated green and ripe fruit ; the green failed 
entirely to *' take," but the ripe ones were slowly infected, 
requiring eight days to produce a rotten spot as large as a 
pea. Now, what does all this mean to the fruit-grower? 
Why, simply that the horticultural millenium has dawned, 



g6 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

when fruit can be grown at one-fourth the cost of the old 
expensive methods, loaded into plain ventilated cars and 
shipped across the continent and back without a single case 
of rot ! And here I will call attention to the government 
investigation now being conducted in California by Professor 
Harold Powell, who has been vainly endeavoring to locate 
the cause of rot in oranges during transit to the east, the 
loss being estimated at over half a million dollars annually, 
which he attributes altogether to physical cuts or other dam- 
age in picking, though it would not have been one cent had 
the fruit been grown ©n a close-mowed sod. 

This could easily be demonstrated with fruit from any 
city lawn ; but the professors will not do it, for that would 
mean a loss of their fat jobs and an endorsement of the New 
Horticulture, though this professor is plainly squinting that 
way from the closing remarks in his recent report on the 
subject, where he says: "The conditions under which the 
fruit is grown, such as the character of the soil, the age of 
the trees, the method of orchard management, undoubtedly 
exert a wide influence on the shipping and keeping qualities 
of the fruit. On this branch of the subject there is little defi- 
nite information. We know that the texture and the quality 
of the fruit are influenced widely by the cultural conditions, 
and it is probable that the susceptibility to decay, the 
rapidity of ripening and other factors that influence keeping 
quality, are likewise modified. The Bureau is carrying on 
investigations along this line." 

Now Professor Powell was in or near Los Angeles at the 
time the Fruit World of that city received my Elbertas 
alluded to, when I also wrote the editor fully, telling him all 
about my theory as to the immunity of sod-grown fruit to 
brown rot and of the other experimental shipments made to 
demonstrate its truth, and, being then engaged on the same 
subject, it is very evident from the Professor's remarks above 
that he read my letter. I will now close this discussion of 
cultivation as affecting the keeping qualities of fruits by cit- 
ing a remarkable instance of its effect on the apple. I have 
a young bearing Terry Winter tree, a favorite Georgia apple, 



EFFECTS OF CULTIVATION. 97 

like all my other fruit trees, in Bermuda sod, and wishing to 
compare the keeping qualities of my fruit with that of apples 
grown on a well-cultivated Terry Winter, I wrote to Messrs. 
Wayland and Reigel, large orchardists, of Pomona, Ga., tell- 
ing them of the experiments I was carrying on and request- 
ing them to send me by express, packed carefully, a few 
Terry apples from a thoroughly cultivated tree. They 
promptly sent me a small box with ten apples, nicely 
wrapped in tissue paper, which reached here on December 
10 last, three of which were already rotten. I left them as 
they were, except one of the sound ones which I ate, placed 
six of my sod Terry in the box, nailed it up and forwarded 
it to Professor Connell, of Farm and Ranch, with request to 
keep all until they rotted. At the end of five days he wrote 
me that all the other Georgia apples had rotted and he had 
exposed mine on a table in their hot office to see how long 
they would keep. On February 9, just two months after, I 
received the following letter from Professor Connell : " Dear 
Sir, I wish to report on the four Terry apples which I have 
kept under the most trying conditions of a hot office. All of 
the specimens have shriveled badly and two of them are un- 
sound, rot having begun at the core and worked outward. I 
have twice added moist excelsior to the box to partially sup- 
ply moisture, but I am satisfied that the conditions are en- 
tirely too trying for any variety to withstand the strain, 
because they shrivel up to nothing." Now, I had the Professor 
make that test to see whether the brown rot bacteria, which 
had destroyed the Georgia Terry in that room in five days, 
could do the same for my sod apples. The result is a com- 
plete vindication of my theory that the conditions in the flesh 
of sod fruit are such as absolutely to preclude the possibility 
of brown rot development, which always occurs on the skin 
first, working inward; for, though my poor little apples grad- 
ually withered away under the high, dry, confined tempera- 
ture, finally succumbing to decay at the core, they resisted 
the brown rot bacteria to the last and died with their armor 
whole. 

I come now to the second effect of the destruction of the 



go THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

surface-feeding roots, which is to so weaken the trees that 
they are unable to resist the disorganizing action of a late spring 
freeze and retain their blossoms or young fruit, which all sod 
trees easily do. This was plainly demonstrated in the case of 
the eight hundred peach trees alluded to previously by Mr. 
Durham, and the conduct of all fence-corner and back-yard 
fruit trees. 

A third remarkable effect of the integrity of the surface 
roots is to improve and perfect the eating qualities of all 
fruit ; that on trees in uncultivated ground being far superior to 
the other, as is plainly shown by the well-known inferiority of 
all the highly cultivated California fruit, so beautiful to the 
eye, yet so disappointing to the taste. And yet, with her rain- 
less summer, that state ought to, and could, grow fruit of all 
kinds as perfect in quality as it is in appearance, if her people 
would only open their eyes to these plain natural laws of 
orchard management. 

A fourth effect of cultivation, contrary to the present gen- 
eral but erroneous belief, is to decrease the size of the fruit, 
where sod trees stand on good soil, or a top-dressing of ferti- 
lizer is applied equal to that on cultivated trees. For j'ears, 
as is well known in Texas, my sod-pears, though picked from 
trees bearing fifteen to twenty bushels, carried off first pre- 
mium at the Dallas State Fair. On one occasion three Kief- 
fers were weighed by Mr. Sydney Smith, secretary, that 
amounted to seven and three-quarter pounds, and Le Conte 
twenty-eight ounces each, while my World's Fair peaches 
and plums were among the largest. In further proof, Mr. 
F. T. Ramsey, the well-known Austin nurseryman and erst- 
while clean culturist, but now a sod man, exhibited at the 1-ast 
Texas Farmers' Congress Governor Lanham peaches grown 
in a Bermuda sod that measured eleven and one-half inches 
around. 

A sixth most important effect of sod culture is that it en- 
ables all fruit trees to mature their fruit slowly and naturally, 
as well as hold on to it tenaciously even in high winds and 
after it is fully ripe. My peaches and plums always hang, if 
left, a month or more from maturity ; yet it is well known that 



EFFECTS OF CULTIVATION. 99 

all cultivated stone fruits in the eastern half of the United 
States mature their crops within a period of about ten days, 
and drop very easily from the trees, while last summer the 
papers told us that California lost vast sums by the sudden 
and premature ripening of the fruit from intense heat. Is 
there any wonder, when the trees had been robbed by deep 
and frequent cultivation of the very roots which are so essen- 
tial to perfect, natural fruit ? But not only does cultivation 
thus rush all fruit to premature ripening, but it is, beyond all 
doubt, the sole cause of certain pears like the Le Conte, 
Clapp's Favorite and other summer pears rotting at the core. 
Before I put my Le Conte orchard, near Galveston, to sod, 
they were always thus affected, but never after. There is a 
sod Clapp's Favorite tree near me whose fruit hangs long and 
never rots at the core. 

I come now to the last and most remarkable of all the bad 
effects of the destruction of the feeding surface roots of fruit 
trees, — an effect never before suspected by any observer, nor 
even by myself, until last summer, and yet so plain that it 
cannot be doubted. I refer to the fact that long continued 
cultivation has deteriorated or degraded all our fruits, until 
many of them are utterly unlike their original types. Some 
actually have changed the color of the skin and flesh, like 
the Gonzales plum, and all are far inferior in quality and 
texture to the same varieties grown continuously on trees 
whose roots have not been disturbed. For instance, take the 
Ben Davis apple, which, with the Gonzales plum, seems to 
be exceedingly subject to this influence. I have often in the 
past seen Ben Davis barrels opened here, and have eaten the 
fruit, crisp, juicy, sweet — a really good apple. The next week, 
perhaps, another lot would be dry, mealy and tasteless. Al- 
luding to this fact, last fall, Mr. F. M. Ramsey, of this place, 
told me that while on a recent visit to the Boston mountains 
in Arkansas, he saw a Ben Davis orchard on a small aban- 
doned place that had grown up in brush and some quite large 
forest trees, and that he had been greatly surprised to find 
the fruit, of which the trees were full, large and of excellent 
quality, entirely unlike the dry, mushy Ben usually seen. It 



lOO THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

is plain that the great diversity of opinion concerning the 
quality of this apple can be accounted for only on the hypoth- 
eses of sod and cultivation ; the latter producing the inferior 
type of apple which largely predominates in the markets, for 
the reason that a large majority of the orchards are butchered 
at least once or twice a year, or oftener. That this theory is 
true, was also proved by the cultivated Terry apples sent me 
from Georgia, to which allusion has been made, the quality 
of which was little better than Ben Davis, the flesh being dry, 
spongy and insipid, entirely unlike my sod Terry, which are 
now, more than two months later, still firm, crisp and of the 
highest quality. How else shall we account for so marked a 
difference in the same variety, similar instances of which are 
often mentioned in fruit journals ? A still further proof of 
the degradation of fruit by cultivation came to-day in Charles 
Green's Rochester catalogue for 1906, in which he advertises 
a new type of Baldwin apple for sale, as follows : 

"At the rear of Charles A. Green's (Rochester, N. Y.) dwelling 
stood a thirty-year-old apple tree, which in every way appeared to be 
a Baldwin. The apples were placed in the cellar, and the following 
March we were surprised to find them of a far brighter and better 
color than Baldwin. The red blush and streaks were brighter and 
the yellow portions more like gold than Baldwin. On eating these 
apples, we found the quality was far better than Baldwin. We can- 
not recall a more teuder-fleshed or better-flavored apple. In quality 
and beauty it is far superior ; in fact, a better strain of Baldwin. Prof. 
L. H. Bailey says that trees of certain varieties bear better fruit than 
others, and that by grafting from these peculiar trees we may greatly 
improve well-known kinds. This is just what we have done. Charles 
A. Green." 

And thereby Mr. Green will get his "foot in it ;" for the 
people who buy those trees and cultivate them will find that 
they have the same old Baldwin of to-day, and will come back on 
him for selling them improved Baldwins at forty cents a tree, 
when he asks only fifteen cents for the old style. Both he 
and Prof. Bailey are ignorant of the fact that the destruction 
of the surface-roots by cultivation not only deteriorates the 
quality and changes the physical characteristics of many 
fruits, but is the sole cause of the so-called "running out" 
of strawberries and potatoes, as well. One has only to look 



EFFECTS OF CULTIVATION. lOI 

back at the many once valuable, but now worthless kinds, and 
eat, as well as compare the color of fruit from cultivated trees 
with that of the same variety long in sod, to be convinced 
that Mr. Green's Baldwin tree is a fac-simile of a most re- 
markable example of change and deterioration in the case of 
the Gonzales plum, originally a fruit of highest quality, but 
now so dry and tasteless that in spite of its fine appearance 
it is almost unsalable. The proof that cultivation has been 
the cause is beyond doubt, and is as follows : Six years ago I 
bought from Mr. F. T. Ramsey, of Austin, the original intro- 
ducer, and an ultra-clean culturist, a Gonzales plum tree 
that had been propagated from trees long under cultivation. 
This, after root-pruning and planting in a mowed Bermuda 
grass sod, fruited the second and third year, but the quality 
was so poor that I top-budded it with the Shiro plum, about 
five feet above the ground, leaving all the Gonzales shoots 
below. The fourth year it bore again, and the fruit was so 
much better that I was greatly surprised. I did not sus- 
pect the cause until last summer, when the Gonzales part 
of the tree was again loaded with large, beautiful bright 
scarlet plums, of such superior quality that I regretted greatly 
having top-budded it, even with Shiro, a fine, large yellow 
Japan variety, which was also loaded, and I fell to won- 
dering what could be the cause of the marked change. Nat- 
urally, being a crank on the subject, the integrity of the sur- 
face root system presented itself, and I set out to confirm it. 
Knowing almost every fruit tree in the town, I went from one 
Gonzales to another, and, to my delight, found all the sod 
trees loaded with bright scarlet plums of fine quality, like mine, 
while all the cultivated ones were a dull maroon-red color and 
not fit to eat. Knowing that Frank Ramsey, who has often 
been denounced for introducing such an inferior plum, would 
be pleased with my discovery, I sent him some of my Gon- 
zales at once, with the confirmation of my theory, and here 
is his reply: "Your Gonzales plums came to-day, July 15, 
and are typical in size, color and fine quality of the first speci- 
mens sent me from the town of Gonzales, and I believe, 
as you say, that they grew on hard, uncultivated ground. 



IO» THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

There is one thing sure, I have never seen more beautiful 
plums, or tasted better-eating ones than these of yours. If 
the sod treatment is the cause, and it seems to be, I am per- 
fectly willing for it to have the credit." Those plums had 
hung upon the tree, full ripe, for over a month. So much for 
apples and plums. As to peaches, I have already shown from 
Mr. McFarland's letter that my sod Elberta was so superior 
to the cultivated Elberta he had been familiar with for years 
that he did not recognize it. Another curious effect of culti- 
vation on the peach is that it increases the size of the seed, 
and, in many cases, causes them to split in the peach, — which I 
never saw in sod fruit. There is also a remarkable difference 
in the effect of shade on sod fruit. It is well known that it 
prevents all cultivated peaches from coloring well and greatly 
increases their liability to rot ; while on sod trees, peaches es- 
pecially, the fruit in the densest shade, which the sun never 
touches, is even more highly colored than those in the sun, 
nor do they ever show a sign of rot. One more peculiarity 
of sod peaches, and I will then leave the subject of cultivation. 
It is well known that cultivated ones picked too soon, even 
though well colored, will never have the flavor of those 
ripened on the tree. Not knowing that this did not apply to 
sod fruit as well, when I came to select the Elberta for those 
long trial shipments, I was greatly worried over which to pick. 
If I took them too hard and green, I feared they would not be 
fit to eat, and if too ripe, that they would rot on the long 
journey. Finally, I concluded it was better to have them go 
in good order, if not as eatable ; so I selected only those that 
were well colored but perfectly hard, and with a slight show 
of green, not one of which could be dented by the hardest 
pressure of the thumb. But, to my surprise and pleasure, 
they all ripened up so perfectly that Mr. Poland, of Los An- 
geles, said they were "fit for an epicure;" Mr. McFarland, 
that "the flavor was most refined;" and Mr. Olcott, of Ro- 
chester, "delicious, as fine as if picked fresh from the tree." 
With this most important discovery, I will now pass to a dis- 
cussion of blight and other tree diseases. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

'Blight and Other Tree Diseases. 

IN the pathology of human diseases, scientific research has 
developed the most wonderful discoveries. Mysteries that 
were dark and inexplicable are now made as clear as day 
by the germ theory of disease in the human system, every 
form of which is due to the incubation and multiplication of 
billions of those mysterious little germs, microbes, bacilli and 
bacteria, good, bad and indifferent, that swarm in the air, in our 
bodies, and in everything on the earth. With this knowledge, 
science is now devoting all its energies to the discovery of the 
laws and conditions which regulate and govern these infini- 
tesimal creatures in their propagation and relation to the 
various diseases of mankind. But, while the investigators who 
have turned their attention to man and his bacterial friends 
and enemies have made wonderful progress, practically noth- 
ing has been done in the pathology of tree diseases beyond 
the bare discovery of the bacteria of blight by Professor Bur- 
rill, many years ago ; while nothing of any practical value at 
all has been accomplished by those of our scientific tree doc- 
tors who have turned their attention to crown-gall, root-knot 
and yellows. But, while the regular practitioners have ac- 
complished nothing beyond killing a lot of pear orchards with 
cultural methods and scientific cutting-out of blight, disin- 
fecting their pruning shears with acids, etc., — as they did sev- 
eral years ago for A. S. Newson, of Galveston county, at an 
expense to him of $1,500, with a dead orchard as the result 
in one year, and are now doing the same thing for the Cali- 
fornia pear orchards, which are being destroyed by blight 
also, — I believe, though nothing more than a sort of horticul- 
tural quack, that during a careful study of all those tree dis- 
eases for the last twelve years, I have really accomplished 
something of value, especially in my study of blight. The 

(103) 



I04 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

two unsolved problems in this disease are : First, Where do 
the bacteria of blight come from, — in the case, for instance, of 
isolated pear trees far distant from any known case of blight? 
I once saw several large LeConte up in the mountains near 
Eureka Springs, Ark., and miles away from any other pear 
tree, with large dead blighted limbs in the center of the trees, 
caused by an attack some years before, but, from neglect on 
the part of the owner, never cut out. Now, the authorities 
all affirm that such dead wood is the nidus, or harbor, for the 
bacteria ; yet there stood those blackened limbs among the 
other healthy branches, and not a sign of blight that season. 
Was the whole air filled with blight germs, in the first in- 
stance? If so, where did they go, and why did the tree not 
blight again? The second unsolved problem is, what are the 
conditions most favorable to an attack of blight? 

Now, while our government and other scientists cannot 
tell us where the bacteria usually come from, they are all 
agreed that the germs are external to the tree in an original 
attack, and do come from somewhere. Witness their state- 
ments that blight spreads, that the tender shoots are most 
liable to attack, that the bacteria enter the cut ends of shoots, 
etc. As to the second problem, they tell us nothing. Now, 
twelve years ago, seeing that the phenomena of blight were 
inexplicable on the external theory of an attack from the air 
exclusively, there was but one other possible hypothesis, — 
which is that the bacteria are indigenous to, and in the sap of, 
every pear and apple tree naturally, in limited numbers, and 
perhaps, under normal conditions, play a specific, useful part 
in the life and development of the trees. A contrar}' supposi- 
tion demands a belief in an actual creation of this germ a 
hundred or so years ago, when the disease first appeared in 
New England. But science denies the possibility of spon- 
taneous generation or an actual new creation ; consequently, 
the germs must have been in the trees and developed at that 
time as a result of certain favorable conditions of temperature, 
moisture, light and electricity. Therein lies the whole prob- 
lem of bacterial life. 

To illustrate, suppose a man should raise a window-sash 



BLIGHT AND OTHER TREE DISEASES. IO5 

a few inches, and sit with his neck, for instance, exposed to 
a cold current of air in winter. Almost certainly, in a few mo- 
ments he would begin to sneeze, nature's danger signal, and 
if he remained there a while, would "take cold," as we call 
it ; but, really, the man would take nothing. The cold air, 
blowing on a limited part of his body, broke up his natural 
heat equilibrium, which we call "health," in the human sys- 
tem, thereby furnishing an unexplained condition, highly fa- 
vorable to the rapid development and multiplication of the 
influenza or "cold" germs in all human beings. But the re- 
sult will not necessarily be a "cold " in the head or neck ; for 
the bacteria will develop at the point of least resistance in 
the system, and may settle on the lungs, resulting in pneu- 
monia or consumption, or they may attack the nervous system 
in the form of neuralgia or rheumatism, and often the bowels. 
But, again, let a person or a number of them, enter a room 
with a hot stove fire, closing all openings, and shortly most 
or all of them will also begin to "take cold." Here, again, 
we find the natural heat condition, or equilibrium, of their 
bodies broken up by an abnormal high temperature and ex- 
hausted atmosphere; but they "took" nothing, for, had the 
room been ventilated and not over-heated, the "cold" bac- 
teria in their blood would have been unable to develop, just 
as the brown-rot bacteria could not do so on my Terry apples, 
but did on the Georgia Terry, grown under different conditions. 
Admitting the above facts as to man, and reasoning from 
analogy, is it not also highly probable that bacteria exist 
naturally in the sap or blood of plants and trees? It is plain 
that there is a marked similarity between the diseases of man 
and of trees. We see the quick and fatal work of cholera dupli- 
cated in "fire blight" of the limbs and leaves of the apple, 
pear and English walnut of California, the slow, insidious 
methods of consumption in the "yellows," while black-knot, 
root-rot, crown-gall and root-knot give perfect counterparts to 
the various forms of scrofula. 

. May we not go still further, and declare that every known 
form of mildew, rust and other plant diseases are naturally in 
the plants themselves, and, under normal conditions, entirely 



Io6 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

harmless? That this is true, I can demonstrate by the follow- 
ing facts, to which Mr. E. W. Kirkpatrick was an eye witness: 
About ten years ago, while on a visit to mc, at Galveston, I 
took him to Alvin to see the orchards, and at one place the 
owner pointed out what was a great puzzle to him. Adjoining 
his pear orchard was about one acre in oats, then heading, 
and, the season having been very wet and the land flat, the 
whole of it was entirely covered with rust, except the turn 
rows, or headlands, at opposite sides, both of which had also 
been sowed in oats, the ground having been burned over and 
the seed harrowed-in on the unbroken, virgin sod. The puzzle 
which the owner wanted solved was, why was the grain on 
the two headlands just as high as on the plowed ground and 
perfectly green, not a spot of rust upon it? He assured us 
that he had prepared his land most carefully. Having just 
then solved the mystery of blight in my Hitchcock pear or- 
chard on the theory of the internal existence of the germs in 
the trees, and located definitely the causes and conditions un- 
der which they had been able to develop, 1 saw instantly the 
cause of the remarkable phenomenon before us. It was sim- 
ply a case of favoring conditions. The continued rains had 
kept the roots of the oats on the soft plowed land so saturated 
as either to drown out the fine hair-like feeding ones or else 
gorge them with excessive moisture ; thus paralyzing their 
normal action and furnishing just the condition of sap most 
favorable for the development of rust bacteria. The firm, un- 
broken headlands could not be thus saturated, and the germs 
remained dormant, under the law of unfavorable conditions. 
I pointed this out to the owner and friend Kirkpatrick, both 
of whom saw the truth of it at once. I asked the owner if he 
had rolled the ground after planting, and he said that he had 
not. There is not the slightest doubt that millions of dollars 
are annually lost by rusts, mildews and other bacterial dis- 
eases, due entirely to loose, unfirmed seedbeds. All grain 
should be gone over as often as possible with heavy iron or 
stone rollers, and once as late as practicable in spring. 

But, returning now to pear, apple and walnut blight, I will 
give a short history of my pear orchard near Galveston — the 



BLIGHT AND OTHER TREE DISEASES. 107 

one in which the first outbreak of the disease in South Texas 
occurred fourteen years ago. Up to that time there had never 
been a case of pear blight within one hundred and fifty miles 
of it, distant about five miles from the Gulf of Mexico. 
The orchard was ten years old, and in the spring of 1893 the 
fifteen hundred trees bloomed like a snow-bank and set an 
enormous crop. I knew that the pears should be thinned, but 
the trees being so large, and having matured heavy crops of 
fine fruit before without thinning, I concluded to let them 
alone. The ground had been in mowed sod for two years; 
but, knowing the trees had hard work before them, and ig- 
norantly thinking to help them, the whole orchard was lightly 
plowed in March and kept absolutely clean until July. The 
spring and summer were very dry, which, with the enormous 
crops— many trees having over twenty bushels— checked all 
growth and sent them to rest as completely as midwinter. 
Now here was the first condition precedent to blight the next 
year, viz : suspended growth during the natural growing sea- 
son. The weather continued quite dry until November, when 
good rains fell, and, being in the nursery business, mainly 
growing pear trees from the cuttings, I set twenty men to 
work, making the cuttings from the early spring growth and 
much two-year wood. By January, we had in over one million 
cuttmgs; and, the winter having been mild and wet, stimulated 
by it and the heavy pruning, stray blossoms began to show 
here and there, and shoots to push from the cut ends of the 
limbs, the sap being in rapid motion. 

Well, on the night of January 17 the mercury fell to 
eighteen degrees, freezing the limbs solid and completely 
checking all growth. Here was the second unfailing condition 
precedent to a coming attack of blight. I did not know all 
this then, nor suspect anything, but three years ago, under 
similar conditions here where blight was never known, I pre- 
dicted to many persons, in March, that Lampasas would have 
a blight epidemic ; and I proved a true prophet, for it came and 
killed many trees and is still with us. We had passed through 
a year with only twelve inches rainfall ; the trees had rested, 
as mine had, in summer, and a heavy warm winter rain set 



I08 THE NEW HORTICULTURE, 

the sap in motion, followed on the second of February by a 
severe freeze. Had the sap been dormant, no harm would 
have been done. 

But, to return to my orchard, which, instead of blooming 
as usual about the first of March, remained perfectly dormant 
until about the first of April. Then in a few days the blos- 
soms seemed to break all at once ; and later, instead of drop- 
ping off as usual, most of them hung on to the young pears 
and turned black, though, knowing nothing of blight, I 
thought little of it. Heavy rains and still, sultry weather 
followed in May, when, it seemed almost in a day, the fruit- 
spurs began to blacken and the tender tips of the shoots to 
droop, until every one of the fifteen hundred trees showed 
more or less signs of blight, though on most of them it was 
light and not a single tree died. The ground had not been 
disturbed since the preceding summer, and never has had a 
root cut since. 

As soon as I realized that the dreaded fire-blight had 
struck my trees, remembering my experience with the nitrate 
of potash twenty-five years before, and its good effect on 
vegetable diseases, I applied, in June, a heavy top-dressing 
of cotton-seed-hull ashes, containing thirty per cent pure 
potash. Igaorantly accepting the orthodox theory of the 
efficacy of cutting out, and feeling it my duty to stamp the 
disease out if possible, I hired seven men in September and 
went over every tree, cutting out every sign of the disease 
far below the infected parts, and finishing up the long, tedious 
job in December, at a cost of over five hundred dollars. 
Now for results. The next spring all the trees again blighted 
but not so much as before, due doubtless to the non-dis- 
turbance of their roots, entire cessation of pruning and the 
free supply of potash. In the meantime I sold the orchard 
to a near neighbor, E. J. Biering, exacting from him a 
written promise never to plow or cultivate it, and, contrary 
to the malicious report that I took advantage of his igno- 
rance to unload it upon him, before I would sign the deed I 
had him go over the whole place, pointing out the blight and 
warning him that it might ultimately kill the trees. But 



BLIGHT AND OTHER TREE DISEASES. lOQ 

being the only bearing orchard of any size in south Texas, 
and knowing its previous immense yields, he took the chances 
and signed a written exoneration, which paper I still have, 
of all blame on my part if the trees died. E. J. Biering is 
still living at Hitchcock and will confirm this statement. 
That was twelve years ago, and neither plow, cultivator nor 
pruning-knife have ever been used upon that orchard since, 
the blight having died a natural death. The trees are lap- 
ping, though twenty-five feet apart, and will average eighteen 
inches diameter of trunk near the ground, and were pro- 
nounced by Professor Waite, during his experimental work a 
few miles away on the Newson orchard, before mentioned, 
to be the finest and largest pear trees in the South. It was 
also recently inspected by Mr. Stiles, assistant state in- 
spector, who told me that it was "magnificent, the very 
finest pear orchard he had ever seen." Now, all these years 
it has cost its owner comparatively nothing except to gather 
the fruit, the grass having been so dwarfed by decaying 
leaves and shade as to require no mowing, — and yet thousands 
of pruned, fertilized and cultivated pear trees all around have 
been killed by blight. 

With this grand, living demonstration of the truth of the 
principles of the New Horticulture as applied to this disease, 
it is plain that the theory of an external attack of the bac- 
teria is false ; for it will not explain such phenomena as the 
sudden development of blight on those fifteen hundred pear 
trees with not a case of blight within one hundred and fifty 
miles, nor the strange fact that they are now all immune, 
while blight exists all around them. Nor will it explain the 
fact that I sent blighted leaves and twigs at the time from 
those trees to E. W. Kirkpatrick at McKinney, where no 
blight then existed, and though inoculated freely with a decoc- 
tion of the leaves and twigs, not a single one of his pear trees 
could be infected. But a still more remarkable fact against 
the external theory occurred here last summer, and one that 
I would not mention unless I had an eye-witness like E. W. 
Kirkpatrick to prove it. With the owner's permission, a 
near neighbor, I top-budded in 1904 eight limbs of a quite 



no THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

large, badly blighting Bismarck apple tree, with buds from my 
healthy sod Terry and Pearmain trees, with just the faintest 
idea that shoots thus grown would not blight. To my aston- 
ishment, the buds all grew right along among the blighting 
Bismarck limbs the whole of last season, making shoots three 
and four feet high, and not a blighted leaf or tip. Mr. 
Kirkpatrick saw the tree and will testify to the facts, and yet 
the scientists are now humbugging the California pear-grow- 
ers with the vain hope of curing blight by cutting out the 
infected limbs. Of course, for looks' sake, it is the proper 
thing to do ; but if they rely solely upon that, it will inevita- 
bly be but a few years before the Bartlett pear will be only a 
recollection in California. 

The same danger threatens their English walnut trees, 
many of which have been attacked by blight also. And yet, 
with irrigation to keep up a continuous summer growth the 
previous season, thus satisfying the tree's natural demands 
and inducing them to remain entirely dormant during the 
winter, and sod treatment to preserve the integrity of the 
surface-roots, there would not in a few years be a blighted 
fruit tree of any kind in California. Of course, all pruning 
of bearing pear trees should cease, as that stimulates a move- 
ment of the sap to restore the equilibrium between the roots 
and tops, especially if the winter be mild and wet. It must 
be especially borne in mind that blight results only from a 
severe freezing in winter or very early spring under the 
above conditions, followed by a complete stagnation of the 
sap and subsequent fermentation, and never from the usual 
late frosts or light freezes when growth has fully started. In 
such cases there can be no fermentation, for growth is imme- 
diately resumed and no harm done. The idea of a connec- 
tion between a freeze and blight has always prevailed among 
fruit-growers who have observed closely, but has been scouted 
by our scientific horticultural solons, all of whom have failed 
to discriminate between the two kinds of freeze, and thus 
understand why all were not followed by blight. I omitted 
saying that when pear trees are put to sod (preferably 
Bermuda, or other shallow-rooted grass of short growing 



BLIGHT AND OTHER TREE EISEASES. HI 

season), a liberal top-dressing of muriate or sulphate of pot- 
ash should be applied, and annually, for several years, or 
until the blight disappears, at least three hundred pounds 
per acre of the same. But wherever pear trees cannot be irri- 
gated, extra-close mowing in time of drought, and fertilizing 
every spring to keep up a fair summer growth must be 
resorted to, not forgetting the potash. Of course, in such 
seasons, thinning of the fruit, necessary more or less every 
year, should be much more severe, though my former or- 
chard has never been irrigated or had fruit thinned, but is 
now immune to blight. 

And, now, a few words as to the various other forms of 
disease which attack the roots of fruit trees, such as crown- 
gall, root-rot, etc., all of which unquestionably have their 
origin in soils exhausted of potash, deeply stirred and satu- 
rated, due to continued rains, followed by high temperature. 
I have experimented so thoroughly, for years, that I know 
this to be a fact, and have demonstrated in my orchard here 
again, that diseased trees, if closely root-pruned and planted 
on firm ground plentifully supplied with potash, will recover 
entirely in a year or so. The scientists all make the same 
mistake in reference to these root diseases that they do to 
blight, imagining that the germs are external to the trees and 
in the soil. There is no such thing as infected soil. I have 
repeatedly root-pruned healthy peach, plum and apricot 
trees and set them directly in holes from which diseased 
trees were dug, placing crown-galls in contact with the stub 
roots, and have never been able to infect a single healthy 
tree, when the holes were first well supplied with ashes or 
other form of potash and trees top-dressed with it afterward 
for several years. 

I will again state that every form of bacterial disease 
attacking grain of all kinds is naturally in the seed, and de- 
velops only when the favoring conditions are furnished, such 
as a deep, loose soil saturated to excess, and followed by 
high temperature. In all the eastern half of the United 
States where rains are abundant, the plow should be ban- 
ished forever from the small grain fields, sowing the seed 



112 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

upon the firm, unbroken soil and then thoroughly disking it 
in, no matter how weedy ; for that places the vegetable mat- 
ter just where nature does, in abandoned fields and in the 
woods, thus adding to their fertility from year to year. But 
after being thus disked in, the ground should be thoroughly 
rolled, the oftener the better. Such treatment would ban- 
ish entirely from all well-drained soils every form of rust, 
mildew and plant blight, by withholding the conditions of 
excessive moisture under a high temperature, which facts 
plainly show are the ones most favorable and necessary to 
their incubation, and without which they are just as powerless 
to develop as the yeast germ is in dough, placed in an ice- 
box or a hot stove. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Pruning, Insects, Fertilising and Influence of Scion on the Stock. 

BEYOND cutting back, for several years, the long canes 
that form the initial growth of the apple and pear, in 
order to compel them to broaden out their heads, no 
further pruning will be required for those trees, especially 
after they come into bearing. But the almost universal idea 
among advanced fruit-growers seems to be that it is quite im- 
possible to overdo pruning of the peach. Now, the fact is, 
but for the continuous cultivation usually given the peach or- 
chard, thus forcing out an unnatural growth of long canes, 
there would be no occasion to go to the expense of pruning 
at all. After setting out a peach tree, the top should be cut 
back to about one foot and all shoots allowed to grow for a 
month or two, when the strongest and straightest should be 
selected and all the others cut away. By fall, such a tree, if 
let alone, will have made a well-rounded, bushy head, branch- 
ing evenly all around right from the ground up. The peach 
is naturally a bush, not a tree, and loves to have its entire 
body shaded, and will need no further pruning until it comes 
fairly well into bearing, when, in order to bring it to the 
proper shape for the economical gathering of the fruit, the 
whole head should be sheared off level about six or seven feet 
above the ground. I know that the prevailing idea is that a 
tree allowed to grow naturally up to the third or fourth year 
would be a mass of branches, and overbear. This is not true, 
as any one can prove, for, having abundant wood, the peach 
tree will distribute its fruit-buds evenly all over the shoots at 
intervals of six inches or more, and not concentrate them con- 
tinuously, as it will where a large part of the wood has been 
removed. The top-pruning, advised above, should be done 
when the fruit is as large as marbles and not before growth 
starts, as that would allow the tree to renew its head from its 

(113) 



114 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

Strong initial spring growth. The orchard should then be let 
alone, mowing occasionally whatever growth comes, or it 
could be put down to Bermuda or other lawn grass. Thus 
treated, all peach trees will broaden out and cover themselves 
with short fruit-spurs a few inches long, and somewhat longer 
ones on top ; but the check of bearing and from the mowed 
sod will prevent the annual growth of long, sappy canes, 
which on cultivated trees must be cut back to prevent over- 
bearing, as well as keep the trees from growing so high as to 
compel the use of ladders in gathering the fruit. Why ex- 
haust the vitality of the trees, as well as incur expense, by 
growing useless wood ? Of course, after a season of exces- 
sive rains the next year thinning of the fruit will be neces- 
sary, — in fact, could be practiced with benefit every spring ; but 
it is surprising, where the natural equilibrium between the 
tops and roots of a peach tree is maintained, what heavy 
crops it will mature to good marketable size on good ground 
without thinning at all. 

The Edwards' Elberta seedling in a neighbor's yard here, 
standing on ground never broken, last year bore four meas- 
ured bushels of fruit, and from it I selected the peaches that 
went to Los Angeles and back, and which the editor of the 
Pacific Fruit ff^i?;- A/ pronounced to be "magnificent." The 
accompanying illustration also shows two rows of Elberta that 
are twenty two years old and have not been pruned, cultivated 
or fertilized for the last eight yeais. I am standing by the tree 
that grew the peaches that went to Rochester, N. Y. , and 
back, but, as the past summer was very wet, it will be noted 
that the top shoots have pushed unusually high. However, 
whenever the trees get so high that the fruit cannot be gathered 
from the ground, the tops should be again cut back. Those 
two rows ought to have the fruit thinned this season, but the 
owner says, "They have never laid down on me yet and they 
will have to stand it." I have watched those trees six years 
and never saw a rotten peach on any of them. The ground 
is perfectly bare beneath, all grass having long ago been 
shaded out and replaced with the decaying leaves, under 
which, if the earth be scratched ever so little, the feeding 



Il6 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

roots will be seen. That photograph was taken October 14, 
and shows how densely a peach tree will cover itself with foliage 
in the course of years if let alone ; and yet the very finest 
fruit comes every year from the interior of the trees, where on 
cultivated ones it would always rot. 

I will now make a few remarks on, and some suggestions 
as to how best to combat insects and other pests. Among 
the latter, rabbits and mice are the most destructive, especially 
where snow covers the ground in winter. Undoubtedly the 
safest protection would be wire cloth or netting, the lower 
edge sunk in the ground ; but an infallible protection here 
is a thick coat of Indurine, or cold - water paint, applied 
for about eighteen inches up the trunk, scraping away the 
soil and daubing it well around the collar. Dissolve two 
ounces of bitter aloes in a little hot water and stir it well 
into the paint, and for mice add several ounces of Paris 
green. Five pounds will make nearly a gallon, and when 
well applied it will stick perfectly for a year and no rabbit 
or borer will ever touch the tree. As to insect pests, the ex- 
periment stations give the common formulas in their bulletins, 
which are otherwise of little value, being mostly old straw 
threshed over for years; but thus far no effective preventive 
against the curculio and plum gouger have been found, jar- 
ring the trees being about the best. But that is tedious, and 
last year I hit upon a remedy that completely protected all 
my fruit. Knowing from experiments with lime on vegetables 
that all insects have an aversion to white, and also to the 
smell of carbolic acid, I slaked one peck of strong rock lime 
and then added fifty gallons of water, after which I mixed 
five pounds of the cold-water paint, adding water little by 
little and stirring thoroughly all the while until the mass was 
a dough, resembling perfectly one made of flour. That is 
the only way to mix that paint, for if poured into water, or 
much water is poured on the paint, it is impossible to make it 
mix. I then added more water to the paint, stirred well and 
poured into the barrel, again stirring thoroughly. Having a 
bottle of creoleum handy, I poured about a gill into the 
barrel, which gave the wash a strong smell of carbolic acid, 



PRUNING, INSECTS AND FERTILIZING. II7 

of which creoleum is a compound. The object of the paint 
was to make the lime wash adhere better. I then kept close 
watch on the young peaches and plums for the half-moon cut 
of the curculio and the round puncture of the gouger, which 
usually begin their work when the fruit is about as big as a 
large green pea, never before that. Finally, seeing what 
looked like a gouger's mark, I strained my wash, stirring well 
through a thin cheese-cloth, and sprayed all my peach and 
plum trees, aiming to get it on the fruit especially. I could 
smell the creoleum (carbolic acid would doubtless have done 
as well) very strong, and the young peaches and plums showed 
the white plainly. Of course this treatment was a bluff en- 
tirely, not being poisonous, but the appeal to the eye and 
nose was most effective, for a daily examination showed no 
punctures of any kmd ; but when the fruit was about the size 
of a large marble or small hickory-nut, I sprayed a second 
time. Though we had several rains, the wash adhered well, 
some little showing on the apricots when ripe, though not on 
any of the later fruit. That was all I did, and, though all 
my neighbors had their fruit badly damaged, I never found 
a wormv peach or plum. Possibly a white wash with more 
acid might have been effective with one application. This 
season I will conduct more careful experiments, and hope all 
fruit-growers will do the same. The same treatment applied 
while apple trees are in blossom should be equally effective 
against the codling-moth. 

As to fertilizers for the orchard, some good brand should 
be used freely the first year it is put to grass, unless the 
ground is naturally rich, for all plowed and cultivated trees 
are without any true surface-root system. Of course, the grass 
will quickly fill the upper unoccupied layer of the soil, thus 
robbing the tree roots below, the first season. That is the 
trying time on all old or young cultivated orchards put to sod, 
until the trees take full possession of the entire surface with 
their fine hair roots, as all forest trees do. If a serious 
drought occurs at that time, by all means thin the fruit se- 
verely, especially on trees that were planted with long roots. 
In such cases, those that were close root-pruned when set 



Il8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

will show a vast superiority in resisting drought. In fact, 
there was a time when I hesitated to advise the putting of 
trees planted with long roots, spread out in large holes, down 
to grass, but I have seen several orchards thus treated and 
well fertilized that are doing exceedingly well. Anyhow, it is 
better that than have the trees die in eight or ten years, as all 
thoroughly pruned, plowed and cultivated ones do all over the 
southern half of the United States. In higher latitudes, with 
short and cooler summers, such treatment is by no means as 
injurious to the life of the trees, but does everywhere greatly 
deteriorate the quality of the fruit and render it much more 
liable to rot. 

INFLUENCE OF SCION ON THE STOCK. 

I will now close this chapter with a few remarks on the 
reciprocal influence of the stock and scion as affecting the 
longevity of fruit trees, especially the peach and apple. The 
general opinion among fruit-growers is that grafted and 
budded trees are shorter-lived than seedlings. This is un- 
doubtedly true, and due to the fact that every seedling prefers 
its own wood to that of another, especially a peach. This is 
plainly shown where a shoot from the stock is allowed to 
grow, for it will not only rob and check the growth of the 
scion, but generally in a few years actually kills it. While 
that is well known, the opposite of this, though true, is not 
well known, which is that if the scion or tree be planted deep 
enough to allow it to strike roots it will in a few years estab- 
lish itself entirely on them and ultimately kill the stock with 
all its original deeper roots. Of course, that will leave the 
tree merely a shallow surface system, within easy reach of 
the plow and cultivator, resulting in a gradual weakening 
of the tree, until finally during a severe drought, and when 
loaded with fruit, it fails and dies. That is undoubtedly the 
cause of the early death of thousands of peach and apple 
trees when they should be in their prime. The lesson of this 
is that all budding should be done at least eight or ten inches 
above ground, to allow the point of union to remain above the 



INFLUENCE OF SCION ON THE STOCK. Iig 

surface after planting. In the case of apples, the method 
known as "whole root" stocks is consequently the worst 
possible form for a long-lived tree. By using short cuts and 
setting the root grafts deep, the young tree will establish it- 
self on its own roots the first season as well as from the piece 
of root, which must be cut entirely away, also all the 
lateral ones, when the young tree is planted in the orchard. 
This will give a clean, close root-pruned apple, free from all 
subsequent suckering. When varieties are known to be weak 
growers, they should be propagated entirely by high budding 
on strong stocks as described above. All "whole root" 
grafted apple trees should be root-pruned as closely as pos- 
sible, cutting back to the body, and planted deep to induce 
the scion or tree to strike its own roots as low as possible. 

Since writing this chapter, I noticed today, April 2, that 
the curculio are attacking my plums, which have just shed 
their blossoms and are very small. Last year they appeared 
later, and it would seem to be the safer plan to spray plums 
just before the blossoms drop. Peaches have not been 
touched. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Tree breeding and Origination of New Fruits. 

IN discussing this most interesting and important phase of 
horticulture, I propose to do it along natural lines en- 
tirely, leaving the field of plant jugglery and intentional 
hybridizing to Mr. Burbank, who has proved himself an 
adept in the business. However, it is much to be regretted 
that his successes have been confined almost exclusively to 
the least important of the tree fruits, the plum, nor has he 
even in that line yet produced an all-round kind equal to 
many of the old European varieties, all natural seedlings, or 
to the Botan and Burbank, both imported natural Japanese 
seedlings, also the latter having been named by Professor 
Van Deman in honor of Mr. Burbank. In fact, while appar- 
ently well adapted to the dry climate of California, nearly if 
not all of Mr. Burbank's plum creations have proved a dis- 
tinct disappointment in the eastern half of the United States, 
and most of them a downright failure. I have fruited a large 
number myself and seen, as well as eaten, others ; but for 
beauty, health, vigor, productiveness and quality when grown 
on sod, I have found none of them nearly equal to the old 
Burbank and Botan. In quality, Botan, or Abundance as it 
is often called, has long been considered the Japanese plum 
" par excellence," cultivation seemingly having little injurious 
effect, but it is a matter of common knowledge that the cul- 
tivated Burbank is now a plum of inferior quality. Having 
planted two nursery-grown trees here in my sod orchard six 
years ago, I was so disappointed the second year that I top- 
budded one with several kinds of apricots, but now, like the 
Gonzales, the fruit on the other tree has been so improved 
in quality by the preservation of its surface roots that I am 
sorry for the change. But while Mr. Burbank has had a 
large measure of success with the plum, it is a remarkable 

(120) 



BREEDING AND ORIGINATION OF NEW FRUITS. 121 

and perplexing fact that, so far, he has been entirely baffled 
in all his efforts to produce an apple, peach, pear or apricot 
that would compare with the hundreds of old standard varie- 
ties of those fruits, all chance seedlings, which Nature in her 
playful, kindly moods scattered here and there all over the 
country, in old fields, fence-corners, back yards and other 
out-of-the-way places, apparently in a spirit of fun, to chal- 
lenge our admiration, tickle our palates and yet mock all our 
efforts to equal them. 

Wipe from our catalogues all Nature's apples, and what 
have we left? Only Peter Gideon's "Wealthy," grown by 
him, but yet a natural seedling. Next cut out her peaches, 
and that industry would so completely disappear that even 
a single "cobbler" would be an impossibility. In pears we 
would fare just as badly, while if any hybridizer ever grew 
an apricot of any value I never heard of it. But having be- 
come accustomed to these most astonishing and inexplicable 
facts, we cease to wonder, and yet when we stop to think of 
the amazing strides of recent years in all the other arts and 
sciences, the wonderful discoveries in light, sound, elec- 
tricity, medicine, machinery, printing and a hundred other 
things, the horticulturist must hang his head in shame, for 
even the achievements of a Burbank, in practical value, sink 
into utter insignificance beside them. Wipe out all that he 
and the many other meritorious, though less known workers 
in the field of scientific experimental hybridization have done, 
and it would not create a ripple of excitement in the horticul- 
tural world, so lavishly has Nature showered upon us from 
her hidden store the beautiful and delicious fruits that now 
fill the pages of our catalogues to repletion. 

But, while others may not have worried in the effort to 
find out just how Nature worked these fruit miracles in the 
past, and is still working them like a juggler right before our 
eyes, and yet we fail to "catch on," it has worried me be- 
yond measure to see her stamp her seal of superiority upon 
some old chance seedling that happened to escape notice, 
and lo ! a Baldwin, Spy or Jonathan apple, or an Elberta 
peach springs up to astonish the world by its excellence, 



122 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

while a Burbank will fruit ten thousand trees or more and 
find not one worth preserving. But somehow I have always 
had faith that Nature would some day take me into her con- 
fidence and impart this secret, as she has the other great 
truths of the New Horticulture. 

Now I believe she has rewarded my patience, and only 
a few days ago, and this is how it happened. A gentle- 
man from the adjoining county of McCullough called to see 
my sod orchard, and, noticing seven kinds of apricots grow- 
ing on the same tree, began to tell me about a wonderful 
apricot near the town of Brady, where he lived, of which the 
history is as follows : Seventeen years ago a neighbor no- 
ticed a little seedling with only three leaves, standing on the 
bare ground near the front door, and, thinking it was some 
kind of a fruit tree and would be tramped to death, he picked 
up a small stick, pushed it down carefully under the little 
waif and carried it, dirt and all, around to the side of the 
house, setting it again in the hard, unbroken virgin soil. 
The baby tree, appreciating the kindness, grew off rapidly ; 
and now, with not a single root ever cut, no fertilizing, prun- 
ing or thinning of the fruit, that tree has a spread of thirty- 
five feet, is thirty feet high, practically a forest tree, bears 
more or less every year and generally full, as much as fifteen 
bushels having been taken from it one year. The fruit is 
large and beautiful, averaging six inches in circumference 
and many reaching eight inches, while the quality is excel- 
lent. This was his description after knowing the tree for 
years, and he further told me that cuttings had been given to 
Mr. Ramsey, of Austin, and other nurserymen for propaga- 
tion under the name of the Sheridan apricot. Of course, I 
listened to all this with intense interest, and when he got 
through, by some sort of mental suggestion or what not, I 
seemed to hear the words, "That's the way she does it," 
and the secret of Nature's skill flashed upon my mind in an 
instant. Now it may be all a fallacy, but the more I think of 
it, the more certain it appears that the hidden puzzle of how 
Nature grows her fine fruits has been solved. 

Of course, the scientific hybridizer will pooh-pooh, for 



BREEDING AND ORIGINATION OF NEW FRUITS. I23 

the process is too easy and simple and will largely eliminate 
him. All that is necessary will be to furnish the exact con- 
ditions under which Nature grew that apricot tree, practi- 
cally the same under which' all chance fruit seedlings have 
been grown; viz., first, a firm, compact seed-bed, breaking 
only ground enough to plant the seed, if virgin soil all the 
better. Second, absolute preservation of the entire root sys- 
tem of the tree, and possibly of the tops also, thus maintain- 
ing the natural equilibrium between the two. Liberal ferti- 
lizing and water in severe droughts would likely aid by giving 
the seedling a chance to do its best. As to seed, Nature has 
no choice, but must take what man or the birds cast aside, 
or what drops from the trees, all of which have been de- 
graded by cultivation and the influence of inferior stocks, as 
outlined by Charles Downing in the following extract from 
his great work : 

" But there is still another reason for this habit, so perplexing to 
the novice, who, having tasted a luscious fruit, plants, watches, and 
rears its seedling, to find it, perhaps, wholly different in most re- 
spects. This is the influence of grafting. Among the great number 
of seedling fruits produced in the United States, there is found occa- 
sionally a variety, perhaps a plum or a peach, which will nearly 
always reproduce itself from seed. From some fortunate circum- 
stances in its origin, unknown to us, this sort, in becoming improved, 
still retains strongly this habit of the natural or wild form, and the 
seeds produce the same. We can call to mind several examples of 
this : fine fruit trees whose seeds have established the reputation in 
the neighborhood of fidelity to the sort. But when s. graft is taken 
from one of these trees, and placed upon another stock, this grafted 
tree is found to lose its singular power of producing the same by 
seed. The stock exercises some as yet unexplained power in dissolv- 
ing the strong natural habit of the variety, and becomes, like its fel- 
lows, subject to the laws of its artificial life." 

Now if Nature in her grand fruit creations, thus handi- 
capped (for all fruit trees are now grown on other roots than 
their own), has yet been able to accomplish horticultural won- 
ders far beyond the dreams even of a Burbank, what perfec- 
tion might she not have attained had all her chance seedlings 
been grown from an Elberta peach, or a Baldwin apple, or 
other fine variety on its own roots and on unbroken 
ground ? Just how far the latter conditions are determining 



124 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

factors in the general characteristics of the future tree grown 
from such seed, we can not tell, but the evidence adduced is 
unanswerable, that quality and brighter color of the skin are 
the result of such conditions, while heredity, cross-fertiliza- 
tion and other influences doubtless determine the size, shape 
and season of ripening. 

For instance, we have seen the outcome of chance seed 
on virgin soil in the Brady apricot, the Gonzalez plum and 
the Baldwin apple, as restored by Mr. Green to its original 
perfection ; but suppose those three trees had originated on 
deeply dug garden soil and been cultivated continuously 
from year to year, would they have turned out to be the 
same fruits ? Plainly not, else the plum and apple would 
never have changed their bright scarlet and golden color to 
a deep, dull red, or largely lost their good eating qualities 
under cultivation now. By all means, let every fruit-grower 
try these interesting and important experiments which re- 
quire no scientific skill or knowledge of the principles of tree- 
breeding, planting seed of selected fruits on firm soil and 
letting the trees alone, as well as putting even a single one 
of our finest fruits on their own roots, as suggested in the 
chapter on " Scion and Stock" and planting the seed. For 
their encouragement, I will close this chapter with a striking 
instance of success here in Lampasas. A lady friend, during 
a visit to her old home in Georgia six years ago, ate a large 
white clingstone peach known there as the "White Eng- 
lish," fine for preserving. Wishing a tree for that purpose 
and thinking it would reproduce itself, she saved the seed, 
and on her return planted it in her back yard on virgin soil, 
digging a small hole with a garden trowel. It came up and 
has borne fine crops every year since it began to fruit, of 
extra large yellow freestone peaches, just like Elberta except 
longer in shape and ripening just after it. Here is what Mr. 
Sam Dixon, our superintendent at the World's Fair, said of 
it: "The ' Cauthen ' peach attracted the admiration of the 
Exposition officials and was photographed whole and in sec- 
tions." The tree has never been cultivated, being in a chicken 
yard, nor ever pruned until this year, when the lower branches 



BREEDING AND ORIGINATION OF FRUITS. I25 

which rested on the ground were cut away. Shall we not 
have to go back to nature and learn from the squirrels, who 
beat Mr. Patterson growing walnut trees, for this lady planted 
her peach seed just as they did their walnuts. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Gathering, ^Marketing and Storing Fruit. 

I WILL now make a few suggestions to those who are with- 
out experience as to marketing a sod peach crop, drawn 
from the lessons learned last summer through my ship- 
ping experiments, and also from my success twelve years ago 
in shipping about nine thousand bushels of pears in a single 
season to northern and western markets, all from a mowed 
sod. I would build my packing-shed with water-proof roof 
and sides, extending to within four or five feet of the ground, 
closed at the ends, with wide door in each to admit wagons to 
pass through. As my experiments showed that sod-fruit can 
be picked while yet hard if well colored, and ripen up a good 
eating peach, the pickers should be instructed to gather care- 
fully all such fruit, as well as that full-ripe, which should be 
emptied gently from the baskets on padded tables. The pack- 
ers should each have two crates before them, and every peach 
when picked up should be gently pressed with the thumb, a 
direction never given to handlers of cultivated fruit, for it 
would cause rot, but not on a sod peach. If it yields at all, 
showing ripeness, pack it in one of the crates, while all the 
firm ones should go into the other. Doa't be afraid such small 
dents will show or make a sod peach rot, for as a test I sent 
some such fruit all the way to Rochester in good order. All 
the ripe crates or baskets should go to state and local markets 
or to the cannery and evaporators, while the firm ones are for 
car-load shipments. Nail up all crates the same day the fruit 
is picked, but allow them both, hard and soft, to stand over 
night in the packing-shed to cool. The next morning, before 
day, the sooner the better, load on spring-wagons, never 
without springs, and off to the market or depot. With large 
crops where wagons must run all day, cover the crates with 
two widths of matting sewed together, and strong strings tied 

(126) 



MARKETING AND STORING FRUIT. 127 

to the four corners to fasten it down. Matting shades with- 
out heating like a tarpaulin. But never ship peaches the 
same day they are picked. See that your ventilated car 
is left with both doors open that night to cool ; pack as 
quickly as possible in the morning, closing the door at 
once and opening the ventilators at each end. That is just 
how I treated the many car-loads of ripe sod LeConte pears, 
went with them to Chicago and saw them opened up in per- 
fect order at three o'clock the last day of July, the fruit as 
cool as when it started. The cars being double-lined and the 
pears cool when packed, the slight rise of temperature dur- 
ing the day was again lowered at night by the current of cool 
air passing from end to end through the ventilators. 

The peaches that made the record-breaking trips last sum- 
mer were taken from the trees before sunrise. There is not 
the slightest doubt that sod-grown peaches picked and treated 
as described, could be shipped in ventilated cars all over the 
country for ten days with perfect safety. They will, moreover, 
ripen up naturally, be of far better quality, and stand up 
much longer than any cultivated fruit from refrigerator cars. 
Of course sod peaches would behave as well, or even better 
in refrigerator cars, and it would pay to use them in years of 
excessive production, for, if regularly iced, I believe they 
would hold perfectly for thirty days. But such a thing as over- 
production would be but an ugly dream of the past, for once 
the buyers were assured of honest packing and peaches that 
would open up in perfect order, the entire crops everywhere 
would be sold upon the track, at prices that would pay the 
grower a good profit, owing to vastly decreased cost of pro- 
duction, and yet leave the buyer a very large margin also. So 
much for sod peaches, by far the most difficult of the larger 
fruits to market fresh, yet a safe and easy job compared to that 
on cultivated trees, which, owing to loss of sustaining feed- 
ing-roots, is rushed by the heat to sudden and often premature 
ripening, usually not more than ten days to a given variety, 
after which it drops. 

The plum, however, is much more easily handled ; from 
sod trees they can be picked when the first color shows, and 



128 THE NEW HORTICULTURE, 

ripen up with as good quality as if left on the tree, and will 
also hang tenaciously to the stem when ripe. Plain venti- 
lated cars would carry them across the continent and back in 
good order. The sod pear is much like the plum, but can be 
picked even earlier. I have had LeConte windfalls, little 
more than half-grown, if placed in a box and closely covered, 
ripen up to excellent quality. This, however, does not apply 
to Kieffer, which must be fully mature and well colored before 
gathering. With this variety of pear the secret of good qual- 
ity is thorough maturity and a close, confined atmosphere. 
Never lay on open shelves to ripen, but pack in bulk and 
cover well, and it will come out a juicy and delicious fruit. 

I will now give some interesting experiments made on a 
small scale with apples last year, and some now in progress, 
to test the keeping qualities of those grown on trees whose 
roots have not been disturbed. In November, 1904, I picked 
apples so grown, packed them in a box, placing it under my 
house, which is elevated above the ground. It was covered in 
freezing weather with hay to protect it, and on the 7th of 
April, 1905, they were all perfectly sound, and Professor Con- 
nell, editor of Farm and Ranch, pronounced the fruit excel- 
lent. But I was not satisfied, for the apples were rather dry 
and slightly shriveled from loss of moisture. The question 
then arose, how to prevent this and how to keep the fruit 
cheaply in the grower's hands through the winter, with qual- 
ity unimpared, and have it come out in spring with capacity 
to hold up, a sound, good eating apple, until sold. That this 
is hard to do with cultivated fruit kept at a low temperature 
in cold storage is plain, for much of the fruit now, March 29, 
exposed for sale, shows the bad effects of too low temperature, 
the skin in places having the appearance of scald, after which 
rot quickly follows. 

But, as I said, pondering last fall over this problem of 
carrying apples through the winter cheaply, which must be 
done if Texas or the South is ever to go into the business on 
a large scale, all at once one day, I was carried back on mem- 
ory's wings nearly sixty years, and lived over again events 
that occurred when I was a little boy at a large boarding 



MARKETING AND STORING FRUIT. I29 

■school in Virginia, my native state. There were quite a num- 
ber of large apple orchards in the country around, two of 
which were on very rocky hillsides covered with grass, and, 
being only about two miles from the school, it was a common 
thing for several boys to club together and buy one or more 
bushels of apples at twenty-five cents a bushel, dig a large, 
deep hole on a hillside in the woods, then cover the bottom 
with dry leaves, on which the apples were poured from sacks. 
When about two-thirds full, we drew in '^ good lot more of 
leaves, after which the hole was filled with soil, tramped 
firmly and rounded up to shed the rain. This primitive cold 
storage plant went by the name of an " apple den," and when 
finished was top-dressed again with leaves to hide it and left 
with the utmost confidence born of experience, that late in 
winter and early spring, when apples were scarce, we would 
find ours all safe and sound. Nor were we ever disappointed, 
for when we opened a small hole on the lower side, there 
would be the big red apples smiling at us, and what a delight- 
ful odor and flavor ! Once opened, we would go every few 
days, fill our pockets and stick a wad of straw in the hole un- 
til the next visit. I remember well that toward the last, some- 
times, heavy rains would wash the soil down among the apples 
so that often they were so covered with dirt, when dug, that 
they had to be washed before eating ; and yet it was a rare 
thing to find a rotten apple. 

Now, there was my first experience with sod fruit, repeated 
every winter regularly for five years, with the same results ; 
and little did I think that it was destined to get me into the 
fight of my life nearly sixty years afterward. So when, last 
November, the recollection of those miniature cold-storage 
houses came back to me, the secret of the long-keeping qual- 
ity of the fruit was plain, and it occurred to me to play school- 
boy once more, and see what my sod apples here would do. 
Accordingly, I dug a hole under my house in the moist earth, 
about eighteen inches deep, covered the bottom with hay, laid 
one dozen Terry Winter apples upon it and a piece of stiff 
cardboard on the apples, after which I filled the hole with 
ioose earth to keep them from freezing. That was in Novem- 



130 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

ber, and an examination today, March 29, shows every one of 
the apples to be not only plump and sound, but of a delicious 
flavor that carries me back to the "apple dens" of yore. In 
view of this result, why could not small growers, everywhere 
over the country, store sod-grown apples in earthen banks of 
twenty or more bushels, just as potatoes are kept, the moist 
earth preventing all shriveling, and imparting a most delight- 
ful quality? But still another suggestion presented itself last 
fall, when I buried those apples. If sod fruit, sixty years ago, 
kept so well in moist earth, why not place the moisture in the 
package, whether box or barrel? So, to test the matter, I 
soaked a small box in water and placed more Terry in it, dip- 
ping the apples also in water, and nailed it up tight, after 
which it was covered with loose dry soil to prevent freezing. 
Just as I expected, they are now as sound and fine every way 
as the others, — in fact, cannot be told apart ; and all of them, 
box and earth stored, refuse to have anything to do with 
the brown rot bacteria ; for, though I inoculated one of each 
lot in three places, three weeks ago with a rotten apple taken 
from a public fruit-stand, not a single one "took." But three 
perfectly sound-looking apples from the same stand, inocu- 
lated at the same time, did "take" in every place the second 
day, and all rotted quickly thereafter. 

Now, while these experiments have been on a small scale, 
it takes only one feather to show which way the wind is blow- 
ing ; as it took but one falling apple to suggest the great 
law of gravitation, and one boiling kettle the power of steam. 
So these few apples demonstrate, just as surely as a hundred 
bushels, that the conditions of the flesh in apples grown with 
surface roots entire are such as to absolutely prevent the de- 
velopment of the brown-rot bacteria. Of course, they will ul- 
timately break down under the universal law of decay. The 
second important fact shown is that, to afford such immunity 
to sod apples, it only requires, at a guess, a temperature of 
about fifty degrees, while with cultivated fruit it must go 
nearly to the freezing point; the result of which is to so dis- 
organize the tissues of the skin that when exposed to a higher, 
open-air temperature, the effect known as "scald " or a dark 



MARKETING AND STORING FRUIT. I3I 

softening of the surface follows, and the apple quickly decays. 
In view of these facts, why could not every large sod orchard 
have its own cheap, double-walled board storage-house, with 
chaff or sawdust between the walls and overhead, and a wide, 
double-lined door at each end for ventilation and chilling, to 
be opened on favorable occasions so as to keep the tempera- 
ture down to fifty degrees or lower? The barrels should be 
perfectly tight and thoroughly wet inside before the fruit is 
placed in them, and when packed, ready for heading, pour 
a bucket of water evenly all over the face, so that it will trickle 
down and wet all the apples, thus furnishing, during their 
confinement, sufficient moisture to prevent shriveling and 
preserve their flavor. A small hole in the bottom will allow 
surplus water to escape. 

Of course, I recommend this method of keeping apples 
only for those grown on sod, though the following corrobora- 
tion which came today in The Rural Nezv-Yorker of March 
31 shows that it is practicable to a certain extent with cul- 
tivated apples in the colder sections of the country. I say 
"cultivated," for the fact that some of Mr. Van Orman's 
apples rotted is proof that they were thus grown. 

" Several years ago I met T. B. Van Orman, of Iowa, and, being 
of one mind, our conversation drifted to fruit. Among other things 
he said : 'I keep apples right up to May and June, and they keep 
improving in flavor all the time, and I have the minimum of trouble 
and loss.' I said: 'How do you do it, for I want to know and 
have it on paper?' He said: 'Take your apples as soon as gath- 
ered. Get good, tight barrels or boxes ; line the bottom and sides 
with paper, then, with a vessel of water by your side and a pile of 
paper, take the sound apples without worms or bruises, dip each one 
in the water and wrap it in a piece of paper, and place in the box or 
barrel; and place also a sheet of paper between each layer of fruit. 
When the box or barrel is full, head or nail up tight. They can be 
kept almost anywhere except in a warm place. I usually place mine 
against the north side of the house, and throw some old trash or 
carpets over the barrels and let them go. If one rots it will not affect 
the rest, and the flavor grows better to the end. I never open a box 
or barrel until I take it in for use. Have kept them in this manner 
for the last ten years. My first experiment was with leaves, but they 
affected the flavor somewhat.' If this experiment is true, and it will 
cost very little to try it, the keeping of apples for the family is 
solved, and will be as great a boon as water glass for the preserva- 
tion of fresh eggs. I would leave at least one package where it would 



132 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

freeze, not in the open air or uncovered, to learn the effect. Let a 
hundred try the experiment, and something good may come from Mr. 
Van Qrman's experiments and experience. 

C. W. Keifer, Kansas." 

Notice that his fruit, like mine, improved in flavor all the 
time, as will be seen from the following testimony of 
Professor Connell, of Farm and Ranch, and E. W. Kirk- 
patrick, to whom I sent specimens for trial. Writing of 
them, the editor says, under date of March 22: "Your 
apples were firm, sound and good. Several persons tasted 
them and declared they were better than any cold-storage 
apples on the Dallas market." E. W. Kirkpatrick, who was 
present and also ate of them, wrote me as follows: "Your 
apple was most delicious, equal to the Northern Spy and a 
better keeper. If we can grow and keep our apples like 
yours, there will be great profit in it." 

I omitted to say above that my suggestion of opening the 
doors of the cold-storage house at night for chilling pur- 
poses, applies only to the southern or warmer part of the 
country, there being no trouble to keep the temperature 
down farther north. 

And now just two orange " feathers " for Florida and Cali- 
fornia. Soon after the war, before Texas had railway connec- 
tion with the world, I saw my friend, Henry Rosenberg, the 
Galveston philanthropist, pack in the fall several barrels of 
beautiful oranges from large trees growing on his well-kept 
Bermuda grass lawn, for shipment to relatives in Baltimore, 
sending them by way of New York, in the hot hold of one of 
the old-time side-wheel steamers. It must have taken two 
weeks to make the trip. He told me afterwards that he was 
greatly surprised the next spring, on visiting his friends, to 
find some of his oranges still on hand and in excellent con- 
dition. The other "feather" is that about the same time I 
was in an old Italian's grove of about fifty orange trees, also 
in Galveston, all of which were trimmed up to clean, straight 
bodies six or seven feet high, not in sod, for the grass had 
been shaded out, but uncultivated. I was admiring the 
beautiful trees with their branches bending under the load 



MARKETING AND STORING FRUIT. 1 33 

of fruit, when the old man remarked, " It's all very pretty, but 
all wrong. Come with me," and he led the way to the farthest 
corner of his grove, and there, with its lower branches lying 
on the ground, also covered with the finest fruit, stood an 
enormous orange bush, as it appeared to me, with its great 
roundhead thickly studded all over with oranges. "Now," said 
the old man, " that's the way to grow oranges, and were I plant- 
ing another grove I would never put a knife to the trees. 
That tree was a chance seedling which came up there, and 
has never had a twig cut off." I opened the wall of leaves and 
fruit to see how it looked inside. To my surprise, there was 
not a leaf in the interior, nothing but the bare limbs and 
smaller branches, all the twigs dried up and gone, pruned by 
the dense shade. 

A few years later, a freeze came along, peeling the bark 
from the tall straight bodies and killing every tree in the grove 
except the big bush down in the corner. It stood all the at- 
tacks of Jack Frost until 1886, when the thermometer fell to 
five degrees above zero, freezing Galveston Bay over, when 
the big bush was killed, root and branch. I will here say that 
no tree takes more kindly to root-pruning than the orange. 
If the roots are cut back to stubs an inch or less long, and the 
body to about a foot after planting, ground well rammed and 
tree let alone forever after, the big bush will be duplicated, 
for such a tree is practically a seed, and will reestablish it- 
self on several deep, strong tap-roots instead of on one, like a 
seed. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Pecan. 

IN the former edition of the book, I had very little to say 
about nut-growing, as at that time no interest was taken 
in the subject ; but the case is very different now. While 
the recent successful fruiting, by Mr. G. A. Schattenberg, of 
Boerne, Texas, of the English walnut budded on the wild 
Mexican variety, so common in west Texas, opens a wide 
field for experiment with that valuable nut, the native pecan 
offers opportunity for profitable investment in the South 
that cannot be surpassed. Of course, many exaggerated 
statements as to immediate profits and entire immunity of 
the tree and nuts from insect pests, as well as the certainty 
of annual crops, are going the rounds of the papers, and the 
intending pecan-grower should inform himself well before 
going into the business ; but, discounting all these, a pecan 
grove of improved varieties will, in time, say ten or fifteen 
years, undoubtedly pay good and constantly increasing 
profits. Or the quicker method of sawing off large trees 
from 6 to lo feet above the ground, allowing all shoots to 
grow the first year and budding three or more of them the 
following season, can be adopted with great success. All 
those having natural groves will find in the various bulletins 
issued from Washington, and also by the State Experiment 
stations, the necessary information of how to top-bud such 
trees, so I will confine my remarks entirely to establishing 
new groves. In so doing the two all-important points are, 
first, how to prepare and plant the trees, and second, how 
and where to get young trees grown from bearing ones, thus 
ensuring earlier fruiting by many years than if trees grown 
from young nursery ones are used. There is also good 
evidence to prove that the varieties so successful in the 
alluvial soils of the Mississippi valley and in the moist 

(134) 



THE PECAN. 



135 



climate of the South Atlantic states are not adapted to the 
drier climate and more elevated lands of Texas. 

Were I planting a pecan grove in this state, if I could 
not get native budded trees that were every way satisfactory, 
I would either set common seedlings, treating them as 
shown hereafter, or plant the nuts where they were to stand, 
and bud them the third year or later, from the best Texas 
bearing trees. Common trees, from one to four years old, 
or even older, can be used. A German newcomer, some 
years ago, planted near here pecan trees about six inches 
in diameter, to the amusement of the old-timers, and every 
one grew. He dug them with short side roots and cut the 
deep ones about a foot below 
the surface and planted them 
deep, ramming just like a fence 
post after watering well. All 
transplanted trees should be 
cultivated thoroughly for four 
or five years and fertilized, un- 
less the soil is rich. The latter 
is especially necessary where 
young trees or nuts are planted 
in peach or other orchards that 
are in mowed sod, I will now 
give the proper method and 
best form of tree to be used. 

The accompanying illustra- 
tion shows two pecan trees ex- 
hibited by me at the recent 
convention of the National Nut 
Growers' Association, in Dal- 
las, Texas. The tree on the left 
was planted with about two 
feet of the taproot, in a hole 
deep enough to receive it in its natural position. The 
hole was then filled with pulverized surface soil and well 
rammed. The smaller tree on the right was root-pruned to 
four inches and planted in a dibble-hole about eight inches 




136 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

deep and also well rammed. The trees stood about three 
feet apart, were set on April 2, 1905, and the tops of both 
cut back to about six inches. It will be noted that the tree 
with the long root, though larger, made less top than the 
other and emitted only small, fibrous surface roots, the lower 
two-thirds of the taproot being entirely bare, showing that 
the tree failed to appreciate my leaving so much taproot. 
The other tree, as will be seen, at once struck several deep 
roots from the lower end, the roots being stronger ones than 
those from the other tree. Unfortunately, the strongest of 
these new taproots was broken in digging the tree. 

Now, in view of this plain proof that the pecan prefers 
to re-establish itself on a new set of taproots after short 
root-pruning, are not our horticultural pecan scientists doing 
inexperienced growers, as well as themselves, a great injus- 
tice in planting, and advising others to plant, pecan trees in 
holes thirty inches deep and thirty inches wide, as was 
advised by one of our pecan authorities at the Dallas 
convention ? 

I take it that every one knows that a pecan tree produced 
from a nut will, in the end, make a much more vigorous 
growth than a tree transplanted with long roots. Hence, in 
cutting back the top and root, as practiced on the smaller 
tree, it is plain that I reduced it practically to the condition 
of a nut, the distinguishing feature of which is its ability to 
strike a deep taproot, with the difference, however, that 
the root-pruned tree struck several such roots instead of one, 
and is capable of reproducing itself with a certain variety of 
nut, which the planted pecan scarcely ever does. Another 
fact brought out by the above experiment is, that it is simply 
a waste of money to subsoil, or to dig deep holes, for the 
penetrating power of a root-pruned pecan tree, like the nut, 
is almost incredible, the subsoil under the smaller tree hav- 
ing been a compact, hardpan clay about one foot under the 
ground. Of course, I do not expect the orthodox pecan 
scientists to be convinced by the above facts, for with them 
facts cut no figure if the authorities advise to the contrary; 
but I believe that a great many of the plain growers, who 



THE PECAN. 137 

are looking for the truth, will be convinced, at least so far 
as to test the matter, which the scientist never does. The 
"good old way" is always good enough for him even if it 
does cost five times as much and gives inferior trees. 

The foregoing remarks on the pecan were written several 
days before the recent freeze of March 20, and the book was 
ready for the printer ; but after the fall of the thermometer 
to 20 degrees, a thing unknown this late for many years, I 
concluded to wait and give its effects as a guide to the 
hardiness of the various kinds of fruit. I have spent the last 
few days examining fruit trees in yards and orchards around 
Lampasas, and noticed some interesting and important 
things. First, as to the relative ability of sod and cultivated 
trees to retain their fruit after such a freeze, I find that 
today, April i, as far as I know, there is not an Elberta tree 
around here that has a single peach on it, where it has been 
cultivated. My sod Elberta suffered worse than most other 
kinds, but has a good one-fourth of a crop, while the two 
rows of old Elberta shown on page 115, have about as much ; 
but the tree by which I am standing is so full that it ought 
to be thinned, though it will not be, as the owner, a lady, 
has confidence in its ability to mature it all to good size. 
And I also believe it will, for, appreciating its noble services 
in the cause of truth and progress last summer (it being 
the tree that bore the Rochester peaches), last winter I 
top-dressed the ground around it and the two trees beyond 
in both rows, very heavily with muriate of potash and old- 
time Peruvian guano, a new deposit of which has been 
recently discovered in the Pacific ocean and is now offered 
for sale by Edmund Mortimer & Co., 13 William street, 
New York. The effect has been most remarkable, for all the 
fertilized trees are heavily loaded, while the balance have a 
very moderate crop and several trees very few peaches. 
Now, here is an effect just the opposite of what I expected, 
for I had noticed before the freeze how vigorously the shoots 
on those trees were pushing and their enormous bloom, and 
the night of the freeze I thought of them and felt sure they 
would lose all their fruit, the sap being in such a vigorous 



138 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

flow. But it seems that any such tenderness was far more 
than compensated for by the abundant supply of food given 
them, just where the greedy little surface roots could best 
appropriate it, thus enabling the trees to resist the action of 
the freeze and retain their fruit. Could there be a stronger 
demonstration of the necessity for letting those roots alone ? 
Of course we are not "out of the woods," for, while the 
little peaches have shed their blooms and look all right, 
some bad effect of such a freeze may yet show up, though I 
don't believe it. If, however, these four trees mature their 
crops, is not the problem of damage to this grand peach 
from late frosts, to which it is more subject than any other 
variety, entirely solved ? Certainly, at least with sod treat- 
ment, and if so every peach-growing community in Texas 
should send a representative to Lampasas in July to see this 
object-lesson which will be worth so much to Texas and the 
South. I will give the result in Farm and Ranch when all 
danger of dropping is over. 

But those forty Elbertas are only a part of about 600 
other peach and plum trees of many kinds, nearly all of 
which are loaded. Another sod orchard on the other side of 
the town, of about 400 trees, seems to be in just as good 
condition, while all the sod seedlings and transplanted trees 
around town, except Elberta, are actually overloaded. 
There are but two large, thoroughly cultivated orchards near 
Lampasas, with the owner of one of which I talked yester- 
day, who told me his whole crop was gone. The owner of 
the other told a friend of mine that he "would not have a 
peach unless some of the stray blossoms now appearing set." 

Now, as to the relative hardiness of varieties under 
such a freeze. Of the improved kinds, Arp Beauty, Annie 
Williams and Alexander are too full, while Chilow, Stump, 
Wheeler, Dewey, Carman, Sneed and Rivers have good 
crops; Triumph, Victor, Crosby, Frances, Dulce, Pond's 
Late, Tarbell, Rogers and Mamie Ross, from a few peaches 
to none at all. Of native seedlings, standing in various 
yards around in Bermuda sod, which I have named and all 
of which are loaded, I will mention the Harris, large, snow- 



THE PECAN. 139 

white cling with faint blush, middle of August ; Connell, 
the peach Kirkpatrick carried from here on September 14 
and ate three weeks later in Portland, Oregon, a very large 
yellow cling with red cheek ; Lampasas, white freestone 
with red cheek, medium size and ripens just with Connell, 
both hanging until the middle of October ; Adams, the 
largest late peach, cling, white flesh and red cheek, middle 
of October to middle of November. All of these seedlings 
have very small seeds and are of fine quality except Adams, 
which is line for preserving but too late to be of best quality. 
Believing that these seedlings, which are now all full and 
have never missed a crop, are worthy of propagation, I will 
send buds this season free to the following nurserymen, who 
will doubtless grow them for sale : The Texas Nursery 
Company, Sherman; F. W. Malley, Garrison; J no. F. 
Sneed, Tyler ; J. F. Leyendecker, Freylsburg ; F. T. 
Ramsey, Austin ; G. A. Schattenburg, Boerne ; E. Knox, 
San Antonio; Orr Nursery Co., Arp, and Fernando Miller, 
Lampasas, all of Texas. I omitted mentioning the "Cauthen" 
peach referred to in a previous chapter, which will also be 
sent, but I cannot furnish the general public. 

The Japanese plums have little fruit except Shiro, which 
has a fair crop. All the Americana and Chickasaw varieties 
have enough. Of thirteen varieties of apricots, which usu- 
ally bear well, only two have any fruit left, the Berzetti and 
Montgamet, both highly esteemed California kinds, which 
still have considerable fruit on them, the former being the 
last of all to bloom and having the most fruit. Cuttings of 
these two apricots will also be sent to the nurserymen named. 
I will now close this review with a letter just received from 
W. W. Durham, of the Austin Sod Experiment Station, 
dated March 30. 

" H. M. Stringfellow. 

Dear Sir. — I met three cultivating orchardists today, one of 
whom, Mr. Rutledge, of apple fame, lives nine miles north of Austin, 
who told me that he had killed most of his orchard by plowing, and 
what was left had been totally killed by the recent freeze. Mr. 
Weaver, owner of the 800 peach trees that lost their crop last year 
by the February freeze, has now lost it all again. Mr. Rutledge 



140 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

says that all the fruit except apples is gone in his section. I went 
through my orchard again today and find that I have lots of peaches 
on my trees. Yours truly, 

W. W. Durham." 

Mr. Durham is a cotton buyer of Austin, who, with no 
experience, had the foresight and sound judgment to see 
the great truths of the New Horticulture when laid before 
him, and the nerve to go out, drive holes in the virgin sod, 
in 3-foot hoed circles, and plant 1,000 close root-pruned 
fruit trees six years ago, to the great amusement of his 
neighbors. They laughed then, but he laughs now. To him 
and the following progressive journals which have from time 
to time opened their columns to a free discussion of the 
New Horticulture and given it kindly consideration, I feel 
under lasting obligations. Except for them, its principles 
would have made slow headway. The names of these 
unprejudiced journals are the Practical Fruit-Grower of 
Missouri, the Rural New-Yorker, Country Gentleman and 
American Fruits of New York, the Pacific Fruit World of 
California, the Peach and Truck Grower of Georgia, the 
Southern Fruit Grower of Tennessee and the Florida Agri- 
culturist of Florida, as well as the general press of Texas. 
The one exception to this fair treatment of so important a 
subject has been the National Nurseryman of Rochester, 
N. Y. , whose editor. Professor Craig, has taken every 
opportunity to ridicule and condemn the book and its prin- 
ciples, and several months ago published an attack on my 
truth and fair dealing by a sneaking correspondent of Texas, 
who wrote him that my trees were cultivated and not a sod 
orchard at all. This was because a space of about one foot 
from the trees is kept clean to prevent damage to the bodies 
by the mowing machine. To this attack friend Kirkpatrick, 
who has visited me several times, kindly replied, giving the 
facts as stated. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



Conclusion. 



AND now, in closing this little volume on vegetables and 
trees, their management and diseases, I wish to say 
that I am well aware that it invites and will receive 
contempt from some, and perhaps sharp criticism from 
others. When, years ago, I first announced the facts in 
regard to close root-pruning, quite a number of horticultur- 
ists assailed me promptly, both in Texas and other states, 
and by argument proved conclusively to their own satisfac- 
tion that the thing could not be true— and many, doubtless, 
think so yet. But the root-pruned tree has come at last, and 
to stay. Still, so slow, indeed, are men to lay aside old 
prejudices and adopt new methods, that years may pass 
before the hoary old fallacies of big holes, deep prepara- 
tion, fall and winter plowing and pruning, as well as expen- 
sive summer cultivation, are laid away to rest in the museum 
of antiquated and mistaken ideas, alongside the notion that 
the sun went around the world. They have caused not only 
a waste of much money but a world of useless labor, as well 
as bitter disappointment and blighted hopes, and to-day, on 
hill and in dale, scattered everywhere, stunted, sickly and 
dying fruit trees bear evidence of their deadly work. How- 
ever, though reform has always been slow, and though the Pil- 
grim Progress has ever had to travel rough and thorny paths, 
wade through the mire of captious criticism, climb with 
toiling step and slow the steep and rugged sides of great 
Mountain Doubt, and ever and anon strike down with the club 
of Fact the lusty giants Conservatism and Authority that block 
his way — yet in the end he always gets there just the same, 
and waves his banner from the mountain top. And so, some 
time in the coming future, the mowing machine will replace 
the cultivator and the plow. Our close root-pruned trees 

(141) 



142 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

will Stand on well-kept lawns, or in pastured lots, where, 
yearly fed with proper food and sprayed, their sturdy limbs, 
clothed with dark foliage of healthy green, will bend beneath 
their loads of perfect fruit, while yellows, blight, root-tumor 
and black-knot will be but ugly recollections of the past. 
That with rational, natural treatment all this is possible, will 
be seen from the two following quotations from the January 
issue of Green' s Fruit- Grower, published in the heart of the 
great fruit belt of Western New York. Mr. L. B. Pierce, 
writing of the "Summer Rambo" apple, says: 

We have a tree standing over the south kitchen door that is about 
twenty years old, from a root-graft, and spreads forty feet, and is 
thirty feet high. Last year it was the only one on the place that 
bore apples smooth and large enough to use. This tree bore about 
three bushels, and furnished pie timber for about two months. The 
entire apple crop on four hundred other trees [presumably long- 
rooted, etc. — H. M. s.] was less than a bushel. This year this tree 
is bending beneath its load of fruit, and about the middle of August 
I was obliged to pick a part to relieve the burden. The apples were 
at that date as large as Baldwins and partially colored, and sold 
readily at twenty cents a peck. The tree should be planted in a 
sheltered place and the ground strewed with straw, as the apples 
ripen gradually, and, being large and heavy, drop and bruise. 

The editor, Mr. Chas. E. Green, in another place, writes: 

I know of a Baldwin apple tree located at the rear of the kitchen, 
near the house drain, where its roots received weekly ablutions from 
the wash tubs. I do not dare to state the annual yield of this tree, 
for it was beyond belief [probably another root-graft or seedling — 
H. M. s.]. I have two apple trees in Rochester near an old hen-house, 
on the rich soil of which the roots feed ; also two located near my 
stable. These trees seldom fail to bear crops of fine fruit, thougli 
the soil is not cultivated. 

Presumably all the latter trees were seedlings, as people 
do not set two apple trees in a place as were those near the 
hen-house — or usually plant two near a stable. I leave these 
nuts for my long root, big hole, deep plowing, summer culti- 
vating readers to crack. 

Duplicates of such root-graft or seedling trees are stand- 
ing all over the country. Will not some advocate of the 
above-named methods explain fully, and give us the whys 
and wherefores of the strange fact that everywhere, the world 
over, fruit trees show such partiality for houses? 



CONCLUSION. 143 

I have introduced the accompanying cut (page 144) of a 
one-year apple tree, grown from a root-graft last season, and 
although the engraving from the photograph shows only a 
small portion of the roots, it will be seen that they are all 
strong and perpendicular, and probably penetrated in one 
season deeper than the top is high. But are there any other 
causes for the phenomenal success of this representative 
apple tree, standing on hard, uncultivated ground ? I will 
here quote an extract from a critic of mine in Texas Farm and 
Ranch, who undertook to answer this question, and suggests 
that, first, "the soil near a dwelling is likely to be rich, deep 
and full of vegetable matter;" and secondly, that "the noise, 
smoke and smell of a human habitation tend to drive harmful 
insects from nearby fruit trees. " Possibly some one may add 
that the slops and wash- water from the kitchen played an im- 
portant part. As to the first statement, is it a fact that such 
was likely true? I see no reason why, but if so, what part 
would so small and circumscribed an area play in developing 
the last full crop on a tree with a forty-feet diameter of head 
and lateral feeding roots, certainly covering, at a small esti- 
mate, one hundred feet in diameter? I have traced oak roots, 
in a field near a wood, that far in a single direction, and 
found them still travelling. His second statement is abso- 
lutely unfounded in fact, for we all know that screens are 
everywhere a necessity to keep out the swarms of beetles, 
candle-bugs and moths of every kind that, drawn by the lights, 
flock to our houses after dark. The live oaks here in Galves- 
ton are much worse eaten by the canker worms near the 
electric lights than farther away. Thirdly, as to the wash- 
water and kitchen slops, in this day of cleanliness and sewer 
drains, it is hardly likely that Mr. Pierce allows such things 
to be thrown around his house, and if he did, as the tree stood 
at the back door, its feeding roots were far removed, and 
would receive small benefit from such applications near the 
trunk. 

But let us examine a little farther into the facts concern- 
ing this apple tree. It is not only of remarkable size for its 
age and neglect, but seems ordinarily to bear enormous crops, 



144 



THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 




ROOT-L,KAl- r— NA'il'KAL S1ZI-: 



A ri'l.E 1 KKli ONK \KAK OI.U, KROM 
ROOT-GRAFT. 



CONCLUSION. 145 

and the fruit, though immature and only partially colored, 
was, without thinning, as "large as Baldwins," and Mr. Pierce 
suggests a sheltered place to protect its wonderful crops, and 
also a mulch of straw to save the "large and heavy apples " 
from bruising when they fall. Remembering that results 
come only from adequate causes, and not by chance, is there 
any adequate cause for the regular and abundant crops on 
this tree, except that it had struck its several tap-roots, as 
shown in the cut (page 144), deep down to permanent moist- 
ure, and that its surface roots were left entirely undisturbed? 

I will now bring this chapter and the book to a close, sub- 
mitting it to the serious consideration of fruit-growers all over 
the world, for its principles are of universal application. 

There is not a single really important operation of our 
modern orchards, starting with the form of tree, character of 
ground preparation, planting of the tree, and its after-treat- 
ment, all through its poor, persecuted life, that is not a plain 
violation of nature's methods, by which she grows trees so 
far superior to ours that any but a blind man must stand 
abashed at the comparison. Being so revolutionary, The 
New Horticulture has met with determined opposition and 
ridicule from a large majority of the Professors, Horticultural 
Scientists and Experiment Stations, who seem to be bound 
with the strong chains of prejudice, Prometheus like, upon 
the rock of blind conservatism. They will not experiment 
fairly, and yet condemn. While there are other honorable 
exceptions to this charge, I will close with two quotations, 
the first from Prof. T. L. Brunk's bulletin, issued from the 
Maryland Experiment Station sixteen years ago, in which, 
with prophetic vision, he says : 

"I believe I am safe in stating that these methods of treating 
trees are destined to supplant old methods to a large extent, and with 
a larger range of species and varieties than has yet been tried, and 
that they have a number of important advantages over old methods 
which will give a new stimulus to fruit-growing and result in a new 
system of training and after-treatment of orchards." 

That he was a true prophet is proved by the fact that 
thousands of progressive men everywhere have planted, and 
still are planting, root-pruned orchards, and putting them 



146 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 

down to mowed sod when in bearing. The other quotation 
is from a bulletin issued by Prof. H. N. Starnes, of the Geor- 
gia Experiment Station seven years ago, which concludes as 
follows : 

"Whether or not Stringfellow's methods ultimately become uni- 
versally adopted, they can not, in view of the various successful tests 
in which they have figured, be any longer criticised as visionary or 
ridiculous, and so dismissed. The Stringfellow theories have now gone 
beyond this point, and must be treated with the respect which their 
grave importance to the fruit-growers demands." 



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